{"id":490,"date":"2005-08-17T03:09:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-17T03:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=490"},"modified":"2018-06-15T12:46:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T18:46:00","slug":"490","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=490","title":{"rendered":"Local Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three cheers for Vera Stucky Evenson, author of The Mushrooms of Colorado<\/em><\/a>. Those white mushrooms were indeed Agaricus campestris<\/em>. M. and I ate them on last night’s pizza, and we’re still here 24 hours later. (Yes, I made spore prints too.)<\/p>\n

The cat ate some too–he must have liked the oiliness of sauteed mushrooms–but he later left his on the bathroom floor. Cats and fungi: not a good combination.<\/p>\n

Local knowledge can be hard to come by. When I taught an environmental-issues section of freshman composition, my student typically knew (or thought that they knew) more about the Brazilian rain forest than about the Wet Mountains, which they could see from the classroom windows, not 30 miles away.<\/p>\n

Th Pueblo Mountain Park Environmental Center has taken a good step with the publication of Plants of Pueblo Mountain Park<\/em><\/a>, which fits our ecological niche over here too.<\/p>\n

This evening after supper I strapped on my authentic Lithuanian mushroom basket, and M. and I walked the ridge behind the house, picking boletes. “Probably the surest mushrooms to recognize beyond the Foolproof Four [morels, puffballs, shaggy mane, sulfur polymore] are the boletes,” writes Lorentz Pearson in The Mushroom Manual<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

My eccentric sister in Kaunas provided the basket. She bought it from a street vendor–it looks like an angler’s creel, but it lacks the slot in the lid into which to deposit the spotted trout. Maybe it was supposed to be a creel anyway, but since the few Lithuanians I have met were mycophiles, it’s a mushroom basket.<\/p>\n

It was Germans who started us gathering boletes. Years ago, we were hiking the Horsethief Park trail on the west side of Pike’s Peak when we encountered a group of elderly German women with shopping bags–typical Army brides from Colorado Springs–and they were doing some serious mushroom-picking.<\/p>\n

They taught us those mushrooms, and then they pointed us one way while they went another way.<\/p>\n

One member of that particular demographic established an unfortunate reputation with the local Search and Rescue group. She was so busy one summer afternoon a couple of years ago looking down for edible fungi that she got lost and spent a chilly night in the Wets. And now the S&R people are convinced that all mushroom-hunters are distracted and easily lost.<\/p>\n

Local knowledge–what good is “nature religion”<\/a> without it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three cheers for Vera Stucky Evenson, author of The Mushrooms of Colorado. Those white mushrooms were indeed Agaricus campestris. M. and I ate them on last night’s pizza, and we’re still here 24 hours later. (Yes, I made spore prints too.) The cat ate some too–he must have liked the oiliness of sauteed mushrooms–but he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,31,48],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-deep-ecology","tag-mushrooms","tag-nature-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-490","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10758,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10758","url_meta":{"origin":490,"position":0},"title":"Getting Lost among the Mushrooms","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 7, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"There are at least five stages to mushroom-hunting. You walk in the woods but do not see the mushrooms. You begin to see mushrooms here and there. Your unconscious is seeing mushrooms. For example, every reddish-tan thing on the forest floor that approximates the cap of a bolete will jump\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bolete-fb.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bolete-fb.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bolete-fb.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bolete-fb.jpeg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4530,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4530","url_meta":{"origin":490,"position":1},"title":"From a Hereditary Tradition","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I come from a hereditary tradition \u2014 of mushroom hunters. I remember my father the forest ranger taking me out when I was ten or eleven to look for them. It was usually raining, and I did not understand what he was seeing, but the activity was somehow important. And\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"mushrooms\"","block_context":{"text":"mushrooms","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=mushrooms"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mushroomjar.jpg-300x261.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4517,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4517","url_meta":{"origin":490,"position":2},"title":"The Wheel of the Year Slips its Cog…","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":". . . to borrow a phrase from another blogger. This summer has been a tough one, trying to keep the garden alive, always watching for forest fires \u2014 fighting a couple of small ones with the local volunteer fire department. The hummingbirds have been working the feeder hard for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"festivals\"","block_context":{"text":"festivals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=festivals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":242,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=242","url_meta":{"origin":490,"position":3},"title":"Leaving Lammas","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 11, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"What was the \"moment\" of Lammas this year? Not a formal ritual, but walking down an overgrown logging road in the Wet Mountains, looking for mushrooms in the grey-green firs. A soft, misty rain started to fall, enough that I had to dig my GI poncho out of my pack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"culture\"","block_context":{"text":"culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=culture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1051,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1051","url_meta":{"origin":490,"position":4},"title":"Trout and Mushrooms","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I are off for a few days to pursue trout and mushrooms. Blogging will resume later next week.","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13722","url_meta":{"origin":490,"position":5},"title":"Step Aside, John Barleycorn","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 4, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"See the Shaggy Parasol mushrooms? They were not there two or three days ago. Yet Lammas comes and they burst forth, full of fungal goodness. Here just north of the Colorado-New Mexico line, August is the heart of mushroom season. 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