The woods are still open.

Howard Wallace

Howard Wallace

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The forests are open here even though all the restaurants and places that gather more than 50 people have been shut down. The nettles so beloved in Nepal and here in the Pacific Northwest are springing up. A chance to address cabin fever, and give those forlorn knives and woods tools sitting on their shelves something to do.

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Not bad eating either. Nettles (Sisnos in Nepali) have their own entry in the HI cookbook. Western herbalists have all sorts of uses for them, but eating as cooked greens is pretty simple.

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Red Flower is with me now relaxing in the forest, but soon she will be back on the front lines. She is a hospitalist at one of the major urban hospitals in the Seattle-Tacoma area. If Washington State follows the Italian trajectory things are going to get pretty busy around the middle of her next week-long stint. Forest time, away from newsfeeds and human structures, is a welcome and vital re-creation.
 
Red Flower is certainly a hero! Thank he for her service to humanity! Yall stay safe and enjoy your stay in the bush while you can. Ive been thinking about goin to the beach. I can live off fish and stingray for quite some time. Them nettles look good! I have stinging nettles here and they are good too. Also Poke salat but ya got to be careful cooking them so you dont kill yourself but they sure are good!
Things are starting to close around here and the grocery stores are plum empty. Fortunately Im the only employee in my office so no transmission there. I do get regular packages from Shenzhen China and first thing I do is throw them in the environmental chamber to kill anything that might be living on them. My wife is retired RN too but not working any longer. That could change depending on what happens around here? Yall enjoy and stay safe Howard!
 
Excellent pics, Howard:) Our thanks to Red Flower. Its raining here (again), but i plan on getting out in the woods next week to let the daughter and wife get some fresh air.
 
State and many county parks are now closed to even day use. Fishing just closed down today. Outdoor exercise like jogging is still permitted but the places to do it are narrowing down. Sun is shining beautifully, flowers are coming out, and the birds are singing.
 
Fortunate for me - I live in the woods and 150 acres abutting my property is a land trust park. :thumbsup:
Yes - the woods are still open :)

Take care all. I wish you some version of open woods in this uncertain time.
 
Great pix and post, thank you for sharing
 
Howard Wallace Howard Wallace , those backyard woods have given me a good supply of Chaga too. Have recently cooked up several gallons of tea. Only have a small batch left for another 1/2 gallon maybe. My 2 year stash is nearly used up. Will need to start searching again. More far afield this time - a great excuse to be out on a woods walk.


I like the hot tea but these days cold (not iced) is good too. Add about 1/4 cup of local maple syrup to each gallon and I've got a delicious drink with the added bonus of fortifying myself against this recent scourge. ;)
 
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From - KGW8 news - dated 3/27

The Pacific Northwest is closing outdoor recreation on a scale never previously imagined.
In the quest to contain COVID-19, and follow state-issued orders for people to stay home, the U.S. Forest Service will close all developed recreation sites across both Oregon and Washington in coming days, the agency announced Friday...
Coupled with the closure of Oregon and Washington's state parks — in addition to many local and county parks — and there are precious few places remaining for outdoor recreation...
The other major federal land management agency in the Northwest, the Bureau of Land Management, is also closing its campgrounds, some day-use sites and restrooms, the agency said in a news release.​

On a brighter note, the springtime appearance of ningrok is now evident in lands still legally accessible to knowledgeable locals.

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The medicinal turkey tail fungus is also in evidence.

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As I was driving back from yesterday’s relaxing and legal woods walk, I did notice some scofflaws entering a forested state park through the bush. Apparently they realized that modern gps technology makes it fairly easy to locate your position even without using marked trailheads or conventional access points, and that once under the forest canopy they would be difficult to locate. Unfortunately I was driving when I saw them, and legally prevented from using my cell phone to report the miscreants.
 
Haven't been finding turkey tails hereabouts - apparently our season is September through December.

These in the photos are coming up fresh. Any uses for this birch conk? Thanks for any info/recipes.


Take care everyone. All my best to Red Flower in particular and all her colleagues on these dangerous front lines. Oh my ...
 
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RayseM said:
These in the photos are coming up fresh. Any uses for this birch conk? Thanks for any info/recipes.
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That may be Fomitopsis betulina, commonly known as the birch polypore. Compare with an online description to verify. Birch polypore does not grow commonly in my area, but I do know it is used in various traditional medicines. Worth looking that up. Interestingly, it can also be used to strop razors and knives, for a wound dressing, and to preserve a smoldering ember for extended periods.

Birch polypore was one of the fungi Otzi had with him when he died.

 
Howard Wallace said:
That may be Fomitopsis betulina, commonly known as the birch polypore. Compare with an online description to verify. Birch polypore does not grow commonly in my area, but I do know it is used in various traditional medicines. Worth looking that up. Interestingly, it can also be used to strop razors and knives, for a wound dressing, and to preserve a smoldering ember for extended periods.

Birch polypore was one of the fungi Otzi had with him when he died.
Click to expand...

Likely Otzi used it for all the reasons you mentioned. I found that info in our book but no solid info on medical properties. I'll keep looking. Thanks for the reply.
 
We support a local rhododendron garden not far from our home. The broad leaved Himalayan varieties are starting to come into bloom. This variety is from Bhutan.
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Rhododendrons are the national flower of Nepal, and the state flower of Washington.
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The other day deep in a local forest I ran into the unusual life form pictured below. A slime mold of the Stemonitis genus. Not a plant, not an animal, not a fungus. Millions of unicellular amoeba have come together and dissolved their cell walls to create the organism pictured. If I could have hung out for a few hours I could have seen it sporulate.

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"The other day deep in a local forest I ran into the unusual life form pictured below. A slime mold of the Stemonitis genus. Not a plant, not an animal, not a fungus. Millions of unicellular amoeba have come together and dissolved their cell walls to create the organism pictured. If I could have hung out for a few hours I could have seen it sporulate."

I dont know whats so special about that? I run into unusual slimeballs all the time! Seems less often lately but that might be due to viral infections not fungal? Those millions of unicellular amoeba where im from dont usually come together in fact it seems they are uniquely polarized and if they confront each other only one comes out alive with nothing positive resulting (as seen in your pic). Not sure how that happens but it does. Sometimes I wish their cell walls would dissolve and figure out how to come to be symbiotic amongst each other but it seems the resultant in something other than sporulation? I can tell you they dont sporulate together. Anyway the resultant blob aint as pretty as what you describe but that resulting pic you show is promising. Lets keep a bit of hopium and a tad of Rhodo honey!
 
The guvn’r of the great State of Washington has announced that as of tomorrow, May 5, his constables will no longer be hunting citizens trodding upon the king’s land, nor those fishing on the waters.

It may get a bit more crowded out there.

Red Flower and I have been enjoying the recent crops of oyster mushrooms, Pleurotus ostreatus.
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Many grow high up in the alders. I tried various socketed tools on the end of my hiking staff to harvest.

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The best turned out to be #3, a hand forged tool from Thailand that allowed cutting in the upward, sideways, and downward directions. The other pictured tools, CS Bushman and two other handmade Thai tools, were more limited in the directions they could cut. They could get the job done, but left more fragments on the trunk than the efficient upward cutting tool did.

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However long the staff, it is always not quite long enough.

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The anticipated hordes of people may or may not return tomorrow. The arrival of Vespa mandarinia, colloquially nicknamed the Murder Hornet, has been announced locally. They are native to Nepal, China, Japan, and SE Asia. These 2” beauties sport a 1/4” stinger that can penetrate beekeeper garb and heavy clothing. They are also aggressive, killing about 50 people every year in Japan. They may keep the crowds away.

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Murder hornets are said to be quite meaty. I haven’t found a recipe yet. Anyone finding a recipe please post. Our Dept of Agriculture has distributed trapping instructions.
 
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