Steven W. Calvert

Unido: 31.oct.2013 Última actividad: 20.feb.2015

Located in 'Na̱mg̱is territory: Ya'lis Alert Bay, Cormorant Island, BC Canada

Pursuing a childhood dream to contribute research documentation to an All Species Inventory of the Pacific Northwest Coast, I begin with this small piece of it: the kingdom Fungi. Making a new home on a tiny island at the mouth of the Nimpkish River, I've challenged myself to photodocument a complete inventory of the resident myculture of Ya'lis Alert Bay.

Mushrooms are chosen as subject because the don't run away when you sneak up on them. In a lifetime fascinated with fungi, I undertake this nerdy futile ambition as an art and science personal challenge, and applied experiment in forest zen. Beguiling creatures, the kingdom fungi; I suspect we've barely scratched the surface of the symbiotic complexities of their biomolecular mysteries. Also I predict we will see mushrooms emerging in strange and wonderful profusions as the climate slowly shifts, the colonies migrate, and the older spores reawaken to take advantage of increasing rates of decay. I want to be here to notice that.

I initiate this project at the invitation of Sterling Sheehy. I see an opportunity to share this applied citizen science experiment with fellow 'pataphysical naturalists, amateur biohackers and ecological engineers, food foresters, gardener foragers, fostering a cultural movement toward sustainable long-view permaculture communities.

With persistence I hope to ultimately generate some useful data as material contribution to an open-source global mycoculture resource archive - if i'm exceptionally lucky and diligent. Possibly also I can produce some concretist ecopoetics and speculative wildlife conservation journalism. As well as some educational curriculum for the local schoolchildren.

My present plan is to attempt to photograph and identify every species of visible macro-fungi within Cormorant island's relatively tiny perimeter: approximately four kilometers square in surface area. I undertake this exploit for biophilia education purposes, as well as some culinary and medicinal curiosity. Primarily i see this project as an absurdist ethnographic psychogeography, with nods to John Cage and others. There appear to be hundreds of species, so the ambition is comically futile.

It is an honour and a privilege to share my survey data with any proximally interested mycologists and wildlife geographers. I wish to accumulate a public pool of photo identification documentation, beginning here with the Fungi, donated to creative commons, working over time towards an all-species inventory of island ecosystems.

Loose start date for this phase was March 2013, but digital photos of fungi captured in my travels in Vancouver's Lower Mainland had been accumulating for almost a decade.

There are many dozens of fungi varieties on this tiny island alone. The biodiversity in this region is truly astounding. Walking in the rainforest feels like scuba diving: the forests are a coral reef of new shapes and colours, strange beings at every turn. So many pocket microbiomes; minor conditions changing seemingly every ten meters, available resource opportunities varying with every slope and shadow.

Presented here are my first two years, beginning an anticipated ten or twenty year sojourn in the northern Vancouver Island bioregion. Accurate identification data is aggregating very gradually.

Please feel welcome to correct or contribute to my identifications.

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