“Mycelium is Earth’s natural Internet,” says mycologist Paul Stamets. He also calls fungi “the grand recyclers of the planet” and says, “Fungi are the interface organisms between life and death.”
If that sounds like a pretty good argument for paying more attention to what’s happening under your feet, the Berkshire Mushroom Festival is hosting a weekend made for you.
On Aug. 22 and 23, Tam Integration, an online psychedelic community organization, and Lee, Massachusetts-based dispensary Sweetgrass Botanicals will bring together foragers, cultivators, scientists, artists, cooks and curious humans at Dewey Hall in Sheffield, Massachusetts, for a weekend devoted to the remarkable world of mushrooms.
Stamets’ books, including “Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World,” have helped inspire a broader fascination with the fungal kingdom, from the role of mycelium in forest ecosystems to the potential of mushrooms in medicine and environmental restoration. Similarly, Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” introduced millions of readers to the history and revival of psychedelic research, including scientific investigations into psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in certain mushrooms. Pollan’s reporting has helped illuminate a field that had moved from the counterculture into laboratories and serious conversations about consciousness and mental health.
This spirit fits the Berkshire festival, whose theme this year is “the mycelial web of nature, creativity, science and magic.” Over the course of the weekend, visitors can explore mushrooms from nearly every conceivable angle: guided walks and species identification, cultivation, cooking, crafts, spore-print art and conversations about medicinal and psychedelic fungi.
Among the presenters is Berkshire native John Wheeler, founder of the Berkshire Mycological Society, who has been foraging for more than 30 years and has identified roughly 1,100 mushroom species. He’ll lead a Sunday foraging workshop and join a panel on foraging and identification with Luke Sarrantonio, founder of Mycophilic. Sarrantonio, who grew up in Rosendale, has built a career around fungal education, cultivation and community projects, including the Catskills’ annual “For the Love of Fungi” mushroom and arts festival.
Daniel Shankin
The festival also goes deep into the increasingly visible world of psychedelic fungi. Daniel Shankin, founder of Tam Integration, is a psychedelic integration coach whose work focuses on helping people incorporate transformative psychedelic experiences into their lives.
“It’s so exciting to be able to bring in such wide-ranging talent,” said Shankin of the speakers and presenters at this year’s festival. “There are people that I’ve been friends with in this community for years that I haven’t gotten to work with in person because they live in Guatemala or the Netherlands or another part of the world, so this is so exciting.”
As the founder of an organization that works with the psychedelic portion of the fungi world, Shankin is also excited to bring the growing consciousness around this modality to more people and train more people to be guides. “Not everybody necessarily needs to do psychedelics,” said Shankin, “but I feel like everybody needs to be able to hold space for somebody who’s on psychedelics.”
Cassandra Purdy, founder of Sweetgrass Botanicals, has spent more than 30 years immersed in the world of plant medicine, shamanism and entheogens. Together with other presenters, they’ll explore psychedelic preparation and integration, spirituality, safety, ethics and the art of creating supportive spaces for psychedelic experiences.
And the weekend’s conversation about fungi extends well beyond psychedelics. Imani Turnbull-Brown, co-founder of the Entheogen Melanin Collective, brings a focus on ancestral healing, Black wellness and making the psychedelic conversation more accessible and inclusive. Other sessions explore soil and regeneration, functional and medicinal mushrooms, cultivation, mushroom-inspired art and the practical business of growing fungi.
“I think people are increasingly suspicious of Western medicine,” said Shankin. “They’re looking for ways to combat the effects of aging and pollution, the effects of toxins in their foods, and they’re interested in taking their health and well-being into their own hands. Learning about functional mushrooms and the healthy lifestyle that goes along with them can go a long way.”
The Berkshire Mushroom Festival offers a particularly enjoyable way to investigate these extraordinary organisms — and to consider whether fungi might even hold some answers to the human-made environmental challenges unfolding around us. As Stamets has put it, “I love a challenge and saving the Planet seems like a good one.” Come see what the fungi have to say for themselves.
The Berkshire Mushroom Festival takes place Aug. 22 and 23 at Dewey Hall, 91 Main St., Sheffield, Massachusetts. For more information and tickets, visit berkshiremushroom
.com
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