I took a last minute trip to the coast with my oldest teenager to spend the day with him before he had archery class. We walked around my favorite coastal forest and found Hydnellum peckii and the little mycoheterotroph, Hemotomes congestum. Our forest exploration led us to the sweetest little fairy forest someone had built out of forest debris next to a cluster of H. congestum. We explored their little village and spent all the time we had building on to the village.

In the fall of 2020, Oregon, and especially the Willamette Valley experienced some of the worst wildfires in recorded history. We watched as the skies downwind of the million+ acre fires turned red, and darkened the sun even at noon. Our air quality was so bad, that it was hazardous to go outside for over 10 days. As our forests burned, communities lost their homes, livelihoods and lives because of lack of warning and scary conditions.

When I come home from a foray where I gather specimens to study, the first thing I do is try and get a spore print. I lay out as many 3x5inch index cards as I have species of mushrooms and write the date, place and a description of each mushroom on the card. Then I add a glass slide to my card and put the mushroom on top of that slide. This way the spore print will be deposited on the slide and I can look at the spores within an hour or so.