“I just do it for the mushrooms”: Pandemic hobbies become permanent pastimes in NC
Facebook carries a lot of baggage. The social media site, its parent company Meta and founder Mark Zuckerberg are constantly in the news for misinformation and privacy concerns, and there’s a running joke about just how much your high school classmates love to post there.
But sometimes, on rare occasions, it can be a source of community and companionship. Enter: the North Carolina Mushroom Group.
“I am not actually into Facebook,” says Kat Smith, a member of the group for about two years. “I just do it for the mushrooms.”
When North Carolina went into a lockdown in March 2020, Smith was one of millions who looked for ways to fill their time, and found it in amateur mycology. The Facebook group has nearly 24,300 members who share their finds on hikes across the state, either for help identifying them or to just admire something neat.
Smith, along with her 12-year-old daughter, have kept their eyes on the ground, hoping to find a fungi to eat, but mostly just to look at. Smith’s most memorable find was an Old Man Of The Woods, a gray capped mushroom with dark gray and black spores that Smith says reminds her of a disco ball.
“I was just looking at the different textures and feeling like I found something special, because I don’t really see people posting pictures of that one — probably because it’s not the most beautiful,” she says of her find, “but I don’t see them around a lot.”
It’s not just mushrooms: lots of people have kept up their lockdown activities, in spite of the world’s return to normal-ish. There are groups of roller skaters and skateboarders that keep up on Instagram. There are Facebook groups for gardeners, whether you prefer houseplants or hydroponics. There are birdwatchers and hikers and even the bread bakers that stuck it out. Mushroom foraging fits in somewhere between outdoor activities, culinary adventures, and learning new skills.
While Smith was surprised to find an Old Man Of The Woods, finding fungi in North Carolina is pretty easy: there are more than 3,000 species of mushroom in the state, from edibles to poisonous ones to the very, very small number of psychedelics. Morels, an edible mushroom with a honeycomb cap, are in season for the next few weeks.
Kenny Rupert, one of the NC Mushroom Group’s admin and an amateur mycologist for more than 20 years, has eaten over 100 edible mushroom species in North Carolina and never gotten sick. He also saw the uptick in mushroom foraging at the start of the pandemic, and notes that the group attracts an eclectic bunch, from “country folk” to mushroom scientists.
Not everyone wants to cook or sell their finds; Smith says she rarely eats the mushrooms she spots on hikes. Zoe McElligott, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill who has been foraging since the start of the pandemic, says it’s been hard to get her husband and kids to try her finds, even though she only eats the mushrooms she’s certain are safe. Despite her 10-year-old and 5-year-old’s aversion to mushrooms, they have been helping her harvest oyster mushrooms that appeared in their backyard. For her, the prospect of eating the ones she found renewed her sense of adventure.
“I couldn’t travel, I couldn’t do anything and I felt very restricted,” McElligott says. “[Foraging] was sort of this piece of freedom that I could grab onto.”
For Smith, it was a way to make sure her daughter got a little time in nature as Chatham County sees an influx of development.
“Development and gentrification and all those things are sort of cyclical, unstoppable forces,” Smith says, “and if we can live close to the woods somewhere, and she can get a little bit of [nature] without having to feel like she’s, you know, committed to some particular group, I think that’s nice.”
Looking for some extra fun-gi? N.C. State has a quiz called “Which North Carolina mushroom are you?”
