Sharing the wonders of purple fuzz (Punctularia atropurpurascens) with Whittier Narrows Nature Center docents 📸: Raquel Perez
My conservation and stewardship committee has a scholarship available for NAMA’s upcoming Michigan foray! The scholarship includes a ticket, as well as room & board. The deadline to apply is this Saturday, June 20th! I was a presenter at the last one and it was a great time meeting some remarkable mushrooms and connecting with folks from abroad. Bonus – the upper pennisula of Michigan is beautiful. Near where I grew up spending my summers in Canada, laid the foundations of my love and deep connection with the natural world.
Thank you for sending me job boards, opportunities, and connecting me with potential future employers! Keep on sending them along! I’m still looking for job opportunities, see my last post for more about my experience, resume and how you can help:
Last weekend I had the honor to teach the nature center docents at Whittier Narrows. Thank you docents (including Raquel and Rocio)!! Thanks to fellow myconaut Raquel for referring me and this sweet note:
A group of myconauts and I went and saw Underland, a film based on Robert Macfarlane’s book (what timing!) by the same name and ran into Bradley Garret, a southern Californian urban explorer featured in the film! Through his explorations of the underground, he reminds us to be good ancestors. Highly recommend seeing it at the Laemmle in Glendale (last chance is Thursday 6/18) or catch it online once it starts streaming. Bradley is currently writing a book, “Groundbreaking: How Tunnels Define the Modern World.”
Friday, July 24th, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm $10 – $40
I’ll be teaching a workshop on Mushrooms and Mythology. Exploring our ancient human relationships with fungi through stories of folklore, science, and art. Here’s more info from Descanso:
Descanso After Dark: Nature’s Magic invites you into a night of wonder and whimsy inspired by the hidden magic of the natural world. From earth-based folklore to the secret lives of plants, explore the mysteries that surround us every day and lean into the wonder of Descanso.
Wander the grounds at your own pace, discovering performances and activities that unfold throughout the evening.
Monday, June 22nd, 7pm, free by donation
As Exploring the Mycoverse grows, questions about what does a future with fungi look like have been a primary interest amongst the Mycoverse myconauts. To explore this question, we will take a step back and consider larger conservation movements of nature through Robert Macfarlane’s 2025 NYT’s besteller Is a River Alive?
In our discussion, we will explore how rivers and fungi can inspire us to rethink the conservation and stewardship of nature. How can we share the stories to show that a river runs through each of us? To protect the rivers (and fungi) is to protect ourselves.
From the publisher:
Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker, Economist, Guardian, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly • One of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 • One of NPR’s “Books We Love” for 2025 • One of Smithsonian Magazine’s Ten Best Science Books of 2025 • A Chicago Public Library Top 10 Favorite Book of 2025 • A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction for 2025
“Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law.
Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, a stream who flows through his own years and days.
Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.”
Monday, July 13th, 6pm, free by donation
(Note we’re trying something different, we’re meeting earlier at 6pm!)
You are invited to join us to celebrate our fifth anniversary of gathering and sharing our love of fungi together. We have grown and myceliated to have reached over 1,000 people these past five years of over 100 free, open to the public workshops.
We will celebrate be sharing food together, watching a short ethnomycological film together, and revisiting a few of our favorite fungi-inspired activities we’ve done together including activities from the feminist ethnomycological zine, Learning and Collaborating with Fungi by Lenka Vráblíková and Elspeth Mitchell.
Monday, June 8th, 6pm, free by donation
(Note we’re trying something different, we’re meeting earlier at 6pm!)
Join us as we explore how the recent research about the consciousness of natural world is connected to the future of conservation. Michael Pollan’s new book sets the stage for the high stakes of who we consider to be conscious deserves legal rights and protections. Along with the rise of AI technologies and their trillion dollar industry, comes the claims for legal for protection and rights – arguments centered around consciousness.
We will be discussing the book in its entirety. If you don’t get a chance to read the book, we invite you to please watch Michael Pollan’s talk about A World Appears he gave at this year’s Bioneers conference, a conference centered on building better relationship with the natural world.
You can now preorder my book Meeting the Mushrooms of Los Angeles: Curiosity, Queerness, and How to Love a Fungus via my website or wherever you buy books! If you purchase through my website you directly support me and my work. I am offering signed and personalized inscriptions (fun for gifts!) through my website. I am so excited for you to read it. From the publisher:
“Welcome to the Mycoverse of Los Angeles! In this wondrous guide to common local mushrooms, Aaron Tupac opens Angelenos' eyes to the mycelial ties that bind us all together. From the San Gabriel Mountains, across the sprawling metropolis, and clear out to the coast, Southern California is teeming with fungal life, whose underground networks support an array of ecosystems. Organized by habitat, and featuring full color photos to aid in identification, this guide will help you spot and marvel at mushrooms burgeoning throughout the cityscapes, sand dunes, oak forests, and deserts that surround us. These fungal neighbors have lessons to teach us, too: through loving observations and stories, Tupac shares our latest understanding of mushrooms' radical reciprocity, vibrant gender fluidity, and the incredible imaginative possibilities that fungi bring into our lives.”
Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length, study finds (go SPUN!)
Sign up to volunteer for habitat care at Eaton Canyon Natural Area.
PUSD Tree Removal Plan Sparks Outcry Over Transparency and Environmental Impact
Resonating deeply with our reoccurring discussions of cultivating delight with nature, check out local Cass Marketo’s book Compost After Reading and this lovely interview:
Looking sporeward,
Aaron
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.