All California Club Foray 2009
It was a great weekend on the Mendocino coast for members of many of our California mushroom clubs. Happy faces, beautiful weather, fine food and just enough fungi made for a fun time for all. Especially heartening was the crowd of happy taxonomists hanging in the classroom, collaborating on IDs, scoping their finds, perusing the literature and generally having a geeky good time with fungi. Even the edible-minded mushroomers got into the swing of things, letting go of the "must find edibles" concept and appreciating the many marvelous fungi that were present in the forest to feed our other senses.
Judy Roger was our delightful chief mycologist, traveling down from her home in the Pacific Northwest to share her knowledge and enthusiasm.
It was a great group. Everyone so enthusiastic and interested. I felt this was a more engaged group than I usually run into. It was a real joy to be with everyone and the long trip was well worth it... Judy Roger
Judy's Saturday night talk on "Some Oregon Mushrooms" was especially appreciated: not merely photos of mushrooms, but plenty of interesting stories to go along with them. Judy is one of the few people on this planet with an intimate knowledge of the impressively large, aged and endangered noble polypore, Bridgeoporous nobilissimus, with their furry, living caps and Judy's genuine affection for these great beasts, they seemed more like pets than woody excrescences of old growth stumps: polypores with personality!