Oyster Mushroom

May 18th, 2010, there in the forest, a tall trunk of alder with tawny ruffles -- Oyster mushrooms.

On Vancouver Island alders often grow near water, and so old alders can be seen from the water, and so, for paddlers who are also mushroom lovers....

I have and recommend three books on the subject:

Common Mushrooms of the Northwest - by J. Duane Sept (see my review at the Amazon page)
Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest - by Seve Trudell and Joe Ammirati
Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America - by David W. Fischer and Alan E. Bessette

I also recommend the following online resources:

Pacific Northwest Key Council - http://www.svims.ca/council/keys.htm
Here is the above site's link for Oyster Mushrooms - http://www.svims.ca/council/Pleuro.htm

British Columbia Ectomycorrhizal Research network Mushroom Matchmaker - http://www.pfc.forestry.ca/biodiversity/matchmaker/help_e.html
Mushroom Experts - http://www.mushroomexpert.com/

I have to confess that these beauties were located a good 200 feet up a steep bank from the water's edge, but worth the climb to retrieve them. The snag had numerous other growing buds, so I will be returning over the next few days/weeks to harvest more if no-one else finds it.

I ate these for breakfast today. Yum.

Even Fresh Water Paddlers Need Healthy Oceans

I am primarily a fresh water paddler, but I do paddled on the ocean from time to time and have a special affection for estuaries. This talk by Jeremy Jackson is about what has happened in the past 150 years to our oceans and what the future holds for them. It isn't pretty.

The crisis is of such magnitude that I felt morally obligated to share this video. We have to face the issue for what it is. Tough it out and watch to the end if you can; then add your voice to the call for sustainable fishing and careful science-based management of all our water related resources.

Sedge Bending

The world if full of grand vistas. People flock to the Grand Canyon for example, or the Rocky Mountains. People huddle their houses together for a view of the ocean, to take advantage of a steel and glass cityscape, to share the sight of a volcano. There is, on the other hand, no rush to view alleyways, boarded up factories, or a vacant lot.

Here on Vancouver Island, you can view a volcano, a beautiful cityscape, and everywhere the changing plane of ocean. It is a common blessing, like being Canadian, like shopping in a super market. It comes with the territory. We sometimes stop to wink at each other, "can you believe we have it so good?"

Evan so, and perhaps because we are saturated by the ubiquitous privilege of our situation, there are beauties we miss. In the brace of affluence it is actually the case that saturation can be the problem. We have the good life, but it has us too, in it's teeth, and it is biting down hard. We are overweight, we are stressed, we are depressed, we are trudging along. What good is it to live in paradise if we slave each day to stay here?  That my friends, is the middle class dilemma.

Sedge Bending might not be the antidote to that, but it might not hurt. So let me tell you how it works.

The Sedge Bending Formulas 

The intro formula: 1 self powered water craft + 1 quiet shoreline with sedges - all electronic distractions = Bliss

The committed formula: 1 beautiful self powered water craft + 1 quiet shoreline with sedges and a few other specific features  - all the distractions of electronic life + a list of "experience enhancing" extras = Bliss2

I agree, the formulas seem too simple to really work, and to be frank, they only work for a certain segment of the population, maybe 10%. But if you are in that 10% you could be missing out on, well, bliss. So might not it behoove you to read a little more about it?

 
The Sedge Bending Secret 

The secret to sedge bending bliss is the Vita Ora. Vita is the Latin root of vital, and generally refers to life; and ora mean edge, rim, border, boundary /coast, coast-line. Thus it is the vital edge, the border of life, the rim of vitality, or the boundary of being.  This is the place on a lake that biologists call the Littoral zone. It is a biogeographic region where conditions are favourable for life. Not just sedges, but rushes, reeds, auquatic plants cluster along this threshold between the relatively barren deep water and the dryer expanses of land, dominated by the light soaking conifers and angiosperms.

In short, there is a magic region of water loving plants and animals that for some of us, not only epitomize life, but impart it to us just by going there. We come alive in this district of dragonflies and redwing blackbirds.  We feel at home amide the frogs and turtles. We belong.

Are you a Sedge Bender? I'd love to hear from you.

And the Winner is.....

If we abandon that other inadequate phrase discussed in the last post in favour of something better, what better phrase should we choose? I compiled a list from a select group of contributors, who’s names shall remain a secret, lets just call them Paul, Charles, James and Jeff for now.

I will list each contribution, comment and rate it on three crucial qualities, and render my verdict. The three criteria for ranking are A. Alliteration — is it fun to say this phrase, does it sound poetic? B. Accuracy — how well does it capture or describe the experience? C. Vernacular — how likely will the phrase be adopted by other paddlers? 3 is high, 2 is average, 1 is low, 0 it doesn’t even qualify.

The List

Candidate Couplet	Rationale	Total
Backwater Idling	Alliteration — 2 — Three strong syllables with a side click tapering to a soft “ing.” Sounds ok, but nothing special. Accuracy — 2 — Fairly accurate, though backwater has a slightly ambiguous meaning, sometimes carrying a negative connotation similar to Hicksville or boonies. Vernacular — 1 — Description but not very inspiring or endearing.	5
Bay Investigating	Alliteration — 1  — While investigating is an accurate description of what a person does who appreciates these locals, the word itself is 5 very distinct syllables, slowing the word down too much and making it heavy. Accuracy — 2 — Not inclusive enough. The golden zone we seek is not just in bays. Vernacular — 1 — Sounds too much like a job for Columbo.	4
Bog Snogging	Alliteration — 3 — Great alliteration, I have to admit. Accuracy — 1 — Bogs unfortunately are not as accessible as fens for the average paddler but some “bog-like” corners of lakes might qualify. Unfortunately the technical definition of a bog includes the isolation from sources of fresh water; a bog depending almost exclusively on rain and snow fall. And not all places of interested are bog-like. Vernacular — 2 — I can see this one catching on because of the humorous if slightly bawdy connotation, but in the end that might not be the quality we ultimately want to sit in our minds.	6
Calm Collecting	Alliteration — 2 — There is a nice ring in collecting, but calm has a soft sound. Accuracy — 1 — This phrase has the danger of sounding like some new age “hunter gatherer” activity. Nothing indicates paddling or a location in which the collecting is done. Vernacular —1 —I doubt this would catch on.	4
Duck Mucking	Alliteration — 3 — A great rhyming couplet. Accuracy — 2 — There are ducks, but we don’t muck them, and we do muck a bit, but not like ducks. Ok, a little bit like ducks. Vernacular —1 — Unfortunately it sounds like something ducks do, or something you do to ducks.	6
Fen Wending	Alliteration — 2 — Not bad but the “en” sound is inherently weak. Accuracy — 3 — A fen is a mineral rich wetland usually dominated by sedges and calcium loving herbs and shrubs and is characterized by the accumulation of peat. In hard water areas fens are often accessible from nearby lakes and streams. Fens are often the pre-cursor to swamps and bogs. They are distinguished from bogs by the influx of water from sources other than snow and rain. Swamps are kind of like fens with trees, and so a fen and a swamp can be hard to tell apart. Vernacular —2 — Sad as it may seem, very few people know what a fen is, so there would be an educational component to using this phrase.	7
Liminal Drifting	Alliteration — 3 — There is a nice onomatopoeia to this couplet. Accuracy — 3  — Liminal is from the root Latin word limin, which refers to a threshold and this traditionally descriptive word is more and more used allegorically for a state of mind characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent when in a liminal state, and there is a sense of crossing over to an altered way of seeing. More concretely (and traditionally) a liminal space can be any blurry boundary zone between two established and clear spatial areas. Both definitions seem to capture the essential quality of cruising along a weed bed on the margin of a lake. Vernacular  — 2 — Liminal, confused sometimes with luminal, was tarnished in past decades by hippie new agers, but it is so apropos that it is tempting to try and jump start it’s use in the vocabulary again.	8
Littoral Cruising	Alliteration —2 — Nothing special here but nice enough. Accuracy —3 — Well, of course littoral means, of or existing on a shore and is from the Latin for “stem” presumably in reference to those plants growing on or near the shoreline. We call them reeds. Vernacular —2 — Could be confused with litter, or literal, which might not be a bad thing, but might not be a good thing either.	7
Reed Clipping	Alliteration — 2 — There are some nice sounds in this couplet, the long ee in reed followed by the sharp ip in clipping, but somehow the clipping seems to trip the tongue. Accuracy — 2  — While technically there is a fair bit of reed clipping (in the sense of “I just brushed harshly against that reed” in the shallow water exploration process) it conjures up both harvesting images and also sailing images. Vernacular — 2 — I just don’t see this one catching on.	6
Rush Hugging	Alliteration — 2 — Fairly good alliteration but not as good as others in the list. Accuracy — 0 — Well, in a metaphorical sense, yes, but you would have to be a very tiny person to really hug a rush easily. I’ve heard of people hugging a grudge, but not hugging a rush. The image problems seem insurmountable. Vernacular — 0 — The “tree hugger” connotation along with a certain smarmy feel, just boots this one right out of the pond.	2
Sedge Bending	Alliteration — 3 — A nice slow roll on the tongue echoes the slowness of the activity. Accuracy —3 — Extremely accurate as bending sedges is almost impossible not to do if you really get into it — so to speak. Vernacular — 3 — Seems to have a natural infectious feel despite the possible negative connotations of going on a bender.	9
Serenity Inspecting or Tranquility Inspecting	Alliteration — 2  — The slow quality is good, but number of syllables, rather than their consonant/vowel blending creates the slowness, so it is not as strong a couplet as others. Accuracy — 1 — Can you inspect Serenity? Perhaps, but if so, it is an inner inspection and while the concept is kind of nice, it is not specific to paddling. Vernacular — 1 Hard to say, but my sense is that serenity or even tranquility loses out to other more concrete image based couplets. The phrase seems shifted away from the direct experience into interpretive language.	4
Shallow dipping or Shallows dipping	Alliteration —2 — Ok, but nothing special. Accuracy — 2  — generally accurate, in the sense that when paddling the littoral zone one must paddle more carefully and with less depth, and one “dips” into bays and shallow areas to take a look, but it doesn’t really capture the magic of the moment. Vernacular — 1 — Is it Shallows or Shallow, the confusion is bound to arise and so it is unlikely to catch on.	5
Shallowwater blading or Shallowwater paddling	Alliteration — 1 — Unfortunately this couplet actually catches on the tongue. Accuracy — 2 — The word blading just seems to conjure up the wrong image somehow and paddling is accurate but suffers from an association with childhood wading or duck behaviour. Vernacular — 1 — Shallowwater and blading are both not already in the vernacular – I don’t think it will fly. “Shallow water paddling” is a good description of what occurs, but really does not create any spark, or inspire any devotion.	4
Silt Disturbing	Alliteration — 3 — Strong sounds with a unique stab at the beginning and a running out towards the end. Accuracy — 2 — It happens. Vernacular — 2 — OK, I can see this one catching on, because it sounds like another kind of disturbing, but seriously folks, is that the image we want to evoke with this phrase?	7

So, five phrases stand out, with Sedge Bending being the winner.

Sedge Bending – 9   THE WINNER!

Liminal Drifting – 8

Fen Wending – 7

Littoral Cruising – 7

Silt Disturbing – 7

 Not exactly sedges, but some serious bending going on....