Walks with Moss: Ranger Davis demonstrates how to stomp a mushroom in the name of conservation

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Ranger Davis demonstrates how to stomp a mushroom in the name of conservation

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these are the mushrooms that Ranger Davis felt the need to steal and stomp on

"Jobsworth of the Week" Ranger Davis demonstrates how to stomp a mushroom in the name of conservation because it's what congress would have wanted..

Not much out there today... I found some Matsutake stumps and a rotten cauliflower that someone had cut to pieces. The only good edible I found today was a hedgehog. I took home a big white mushroom to identify, it smells nice.

To end the day I decided to go out to Staircase in Olympic National Park and have a picnic lunch. I've been teaching my little one how wonderful it is that we have ONP and showed it to her on google earth so she could see the difference between ONP and all the logged over lands outside of it.

I had my mushroom ID book and lichen ID book with me so I grabbed a few tiny mushrooms from the campground (you know, the place where even dogs are allowed?) so I could key them out and then probably leave them in the park. But along came a jobsworth of a ranger to ruin my day. He stopped and wanted to know what I was doing. I told him I was taking a mushroom class and he flipped his lid... he told me I need a permit to pick anything in the park. Then he demanded my ID and spent far too long in his truck waiting for his radio to tell him that I have no criminal history. From the amount of time he took he must have been running my name "all ways" in a desperate attempt to try to find anything he could. Gosh I bet that really disappointed him. Sorry, I'm not a criminal, but I just happen to be one most outspoken conservationists in the county. It was freaking cold out there and me and my daughter were shivering while we waited for him to do his B.S. with the radio. Does anyone know what frequency they use up at staircase?

I argued with him a bit when he tried to lie to me about the rules. You don't need a permit for picking mushrooms for personal use and yet he demanded to see my permit, presumably in an attempt to intimidate me. Anyway I guess he is used to the way most Americans suck up to anyone in a uniform. What it all boils down to is, if I had lied and said I was picking for the table he would have said I was within the law but since I told him I was taking a mushroom class and doing science (and he did not believe me) he threatened me with a ticket and forced me to dump out my 1/2 cup of tiny mushrooms. Then he stomped the helpless little mushrooms into the ground in front of me and my daughter. Nice job.. stomping mushrooms in the name of conservation, and in front of a child. That's the way to protect our national heritage, I'm sure this is what congress had in mind!

His logic was that the mushrooms could be poison and you can't pick stuff unless you know exactly what it is because if it turns out to be poison you can't eat it and then you've committed a crime, because you can't pick stuff you're not gonna eat. Can you say fungiphobia? So following this logic, I guess that first chanterelle I picked out at Staircase in 2004 was illegally picked because I was not certain it was a chanterelle. Yes I took it home and ID'ed it before I ate it. GOD FORBID!!! What if I let one of the many chanterelles I have picked out there over the years rot in the fridge before I could eat it? Would that be a crime? A rotten chanterelle is poisonous. What about the maggoty parts of mushrooms that I cut off and composted? Isn't it a crime to remove maggots from ONP since they are animals and not the fruiting bodies of plants? Where exactly do we draw the line Mr. Jobsworth?

Most mushrooms are not poisonous, but you can't really expect a jobsworth of a LEO to know that, even if he just happens to work in ONP which just happens to be the most fabulous mushroom garden on the entire planet. He should go back to Alabama or what ever southern state he is from and learn something about mushrooms (and humanity) before he comes back out here.

Mr. Jobsworth stomped on the Boletus zelleri that my daughter was wanting to eat. Before that, my youngest wanted to be a park ranger but now she's having second thoughts. She loves mushrooms and does not want a job that requires her to stomp on edible mushrooms. I told her she could be a nice back country ranger ( like Ranger Bruce who also works at Staircase and is a nice person) but she would have to clean out outhouses if she was a back country ranger. So now she has decided she wants the Rangers job of "sitting at the place with the red light and taking people's money".

Shit like this makes me glad that Dosewallips never re-opened. I can hike in there and look at all the empty ranger buildings and falling down "no parking" signs and have the place all to myself. Staircase used to be closed during the winter; I wish it still was. With the rangers in there all the time the Elk are gone. Back when Staircase was closed in the winter I could count on seeing elk during every hike. I wonder where the elk go now that the rangers have spoiled their winter habitat?

I avoid Staircase like the plague in the summer, it's a horrible noisy zoo at that time. I always wait until winter to go there, but now even during winter Staircase is not so much fun.

Anyway, now that I've got that off my chest I'll upload some pictures I took today, including a picture of a badly vandalized tree in Olympic National Forest where the only law enforcement is to cart off undocumented salal pickers.

I spotted a yew tree in the campground at Staircase, I have only learned how to identify them this quarter, I also spotted many other things that I can now name, thanks to the class I am in. I love classes like this that open my eyes and help me to see things. I never got that out of my "Temperate Rainforests" class but "The Fungal Kingdom" has taught me a lot. This class is so very much better than my experience with Temperate Rainforests. Both classes are upper division science, but this class is run well and I'm learning all kinds of things and I'm very happy with it. Maybe I won't be so frightened of upper division science after the nice experience I have had with this class.

Now this really should be a crime!

This bark was left in a hole in the ground. Is the vandal planning on coming back to get it? See the
tree this recently removed from below...

Vandalized cedar tree. Was this the work of a basket maker? At least they did not girdle the tree so it will live, but where the hell are the forest rangers when they are actually needed? How could someone do all of this without being caught?
Oh wait, maybe this is legal because they did not actually remove the bark from the park and they probably already
knew that it was cedar bark, so they did not have to ID it to see if it was poison.

I now know that it is Usnea longissima that has prompted me to take so many photos of this tree over the years

Ranger Davis stomped these into the ground while invoking the name of congress

Ranger Davis did not stomp these, perhaps he should go back and give them a good stomping just to be safe


Ranger Davis did not stomp these because they are protected from him by Olympic National Forest. I don't know what they are, but they are growing in a possible Peltigera membranacea lichen

I think this lichen at Staircase is Sphaerophorus globosus but I'm probably wrong

Xylaria hypoxylon fungus at Staircase (common name candlesnuff fungus)

fairy vomit lichen on an old growth stump, I hope the tree was stomped before it could be removed form the park

Unknown lichen, maybe an Usnea spp

I've never seen Lake Cushman so low and I've never seen these stumps with branches on them before. I certainly hope that Ranger Davis was around to stomp the city of Tacoma for doing this the the North Fork Skokomish River Valley. Of course, one individual picking an fungus to ID is a terrible crime compared to what the greedy corporations and cities have done to this once beautiful valley.