One of the highlights of this year has been the UV Night Foray I planned for the WVMS Funga Study group. Our group gathered at dusk at the trailhead to hike down a trail and wait for dark. It is only after dark that our adventure began and we lit up the forest in Technicolor wonder.

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.