He has spent the past quarter-century preaching that gospel to anyone who will listen. Mushroom-producing fungi, he believes, can serve as game changers in fields as disparate as medicine, forestry, pesticides and pollution control. Stamets, however, cherishes a grander vision, one trumpeted in the subtitle of his 2005 book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Most Americans think of mushrooms as ingredients in soup or intruders on a well-tended lawn. “Smell that? It seems to be outgassing chlorine.” To Stamets, that suggests it can break down toxic chlorine-based polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.
“This could provide a defense against weaponized smallpox.” He plucks a tiny, gray Mycena alcalina from the soil and holds it under our noses. He ducks beneath a rotting log, where a rare, beehive-like Agarikon dangles. “These could clean up oil spills all over the planet,” he says. He points to a clutch of plump oyster mushrooms halfway up an alder trunk. But the species that stop him in his tracks, and bring a look of bliss to his bushy-bearded face, possess qualities far beyond the culinary. Stamets is trying to find a patch of chanterelles, a variety known for its exquisite flavor.
This outing is part of a workshop on the fungi commonly known as mushrooms - a class of organisms whose cell walls are stiffened by a molecule called chitin instead of the cellulose found in plants, and whose most ardent scientific evangelist is the man ahead of us. He never slows down, but he halts abruptly whenever a specimen demands his attention. He vaults over fallen trees, scrambles up muddy ravines, plows through shin-deep puddles in his rubber boots. It’s raining steadily, and the moss beneath our feet is slick, but Stamets, 57, barrels across it like a grizzly bear heading for a stump full of honey. This morning, a half-dozen of us are struggling to keep up with the mycologist as he charges through a fir-and-alder forest on Cortes Island, British Columbia. For Paul Stamets, the phrase “mushroom hunt” does not denote a leisurely stroll with a napkin-lined basket.
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