What is an online mushroom foray, you say? It’s actually not an experience unique to the pandemic, and it’s not hunting virtual mushrooms. You go mushroom hunting like normal, only you document your finds a little more carefully and upload them online. They last for a certain period of time, this one a week, and span a certain geographical range, Indiana, in this case. There is an online sense of community because everyone is uploading their finds to the same project, seeing what other people are seeing more or less synchronously, and sharing IDs. There’s also an element of competition because there are standings for who has observed the most and identified the most. It’s like mushroom olympics. I started out in second, but over the course of a busy work week, I’ve plummeted to seventh 😦
By the way, the word “foray” is worth note. It is both an incursion and an excursion. Incursion in the sense of raid, invasion, sudden attack on an enemy territory. Excursion in the sense of a trip, a deviation from the regular path. This ought to be some kind of crossword clue, in my opinion.
Also interesting is that while you forage for mushrooms, rather than foray for them, at the end of the day, it’s a foray and not a forage!
Anyways, here are some of my most interesting finds:
recycled paper clips 