Telluride Shroomfest, August 18 – August 21: Art's overview

12 Aug Telluride Shroomfest, August 18 – August 21: Art's overview

[click “Play” to hear Susan’s conversation with Art Goodtimes]

“The mushrooms have two strange properties: the one that they yield so delicious a meat; the other that they come up so hastily, as in a night, and yet they are unsown,” Francis Bacon, “Naturall Histories, 1624.

In Telluridespeak, the event is known as “Shroomfest.” The 31st annual Shroomfest, aka Telluride Mushroom Festival  – billed as  “nation’s oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal & enthogenic” – happens next weekend, Thursday, August 18– Sunday, August 21.

Gary Lincoff of the New York Botanical Garden is the keynote speaker for the 2011 Telluride Shroomfest and one of the leading mycologists in the world. Specifically he plans to explore subjects such as Mushroom Identification: How to Do It and Live to Tell About It and The Philosopher’s Stone, or How Mushrooms Can Save You Thousands of Dollars in Therapy and Free You from the Prison of Time and Space  as well as lead forays, identification slide shows and ID workshops.

In the context of the Telluride Shroomfest, the world wide web takes on a whole other meaning: we are talking about mycelium, the sentient cobweb-like web of cells, which, in just one magical phase of its life cycle, fruits mushrooms. Shroom evangelists from Lincoff ( Identification, Cultural, Medicinal tracks) to Leslie Meteroff (Culinary track), Paul Stamets (Cultural, Medicinal, Remediation tracks), Britt Bunyard (Entheogens track), and Ty Allchin (Cultivation track) head the list of true believers who contend fabulous fungi have the potential to save the planet.

And edible fungi taste good too.

But what if you can’t tell the difference between edible and a really bad stomach ache (or worse)? “Go ask Alice?” Not so much. Your best bet is Shroomfest, with nearly as much to offer as fungi themselves.

To learn more about the Telluride ShroomFest and why fungal infatuation is a growing trend, click on the “play” button and listen to an interview with event organizer/poet-in-residence/county commissioner Art Goodtimes.