Good Fungi, Bad Fungi

The weather in coastal British Columbia is probably the most clearly divided in the world. It rains for half a year and stay sunny for half a year. They hardly ever mingled. We are well settled into he rainy part now. It is dark, wet and foggy—stuff of Northern European myths and legends. It is also the condition for fungus. The small spices of fungi have cost apartment dwellers hundreds of millions of dollars all around the urban areas. Just outside of the cities and up the mountains, the fungi work a different kind of magic. The fungi grow bigger there and right now there are still chanterelles and matsutake out there. My friend Lewis the mushroom picker half sold half gave me a couple bag of the finest examples of them over the weekend. These are amazing little things and I feel like such a ridiculous indulgent while digging into a whole soup bowl full of sautéed chanterelle and matsutake. For a brief moment, wild fungi become a treat rather than enemy. Why don’t they come up with a new insulation on which grows edible mushrooms instead of poisonous moulds?