“All Fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once.”

—Terry Pratchett

It’s been a slightly stressful week. I had a rough several days early last week that persisted through Friday with back and leg pain, and I also had appointments with the VA for medical claims related to those issues which left me anxious the entire week. On top of that, I start a new job this week after being out of work since separating from the Navy in December. So after stressing then resting all week and through the weekend, I pulled myself out of bed and headed to Patapsco Valley state park for another round of mushroom photos along the Cascade Falls trail.

I tried to go in the afternoon yesterday, but the holiday has everyone flooding to the parks and they were closed due to capacity. Today, I headed out an hour early and got there about half an hour before they opened. Still, I underestimated the amount of people that would be at the park and had another half hour wait in traffic to enter Patapsco. Already, the park was almost entirely filled, and I thought I was going to have to head home once again. Thankfully, I found a single parking space near the trail and started my hike.

If only that were the only headache for the day. About a mile in, I found a patch of red chantrelles. They look very similar to the small chantrelles that I found about a half mile away a few weeks ago, but the color is noticeably deeper red.

After 10 shots, I couldn’t advance the film any further and immediately knew I jammed it. My heart sank. I almost walked out of the woods, but I figured I had gone through the trouble and leaving wouldn’t make it better. I opened the film back, tore the now useless film away from the canister, removed the jam, and reloaded the remaining film. After reshooting a few compositions, I continued on down the trail.

Moving into July, I’m starting to see new mushrooms pop up at the places I heavily frequented in June. Watching the woods change so much makes every trip out new in a way. When I was in Georgia, I hiked and ran the same trails for nearly eight years without seeing much of a difference outside of seasonal rotations. It’s probably because I wasn’t looking, but I’m choosing to ignore that.

At one of my regular spots located at the junction point just beyond the titular Cascade Falls, I came across this snail hanging around some currently unidentified polypores and set up for a shot. I spent a solid 15-20 minutes waiting for it to crawl into position (and gently coaxed it to not take off before I could get my light where I wanted it) before firing off several photos.

A couple minutes further down the trail, I found some “mushroom adjacent” plants called Ghost Pipes. While walking, I saw a bright bushel of white stems jutting from the ground just off the trail and thought they were mushrooms. When I got closer, I realized what they were and became excited. While they aren’t mushrooms, they are parasitic plants that use mushrooms to get nutrients from neighboring trees. Because they weren’t true mushrooms, I decided not to snap a photo for the project and kept walking.

About a mile more down the trail with no mushroom sightings worth attempting a photo for on such a short roll, I decided to turn around early. On my way back I came across a large, old Artist’s Conk. With it, I finished the hike and headed home a bit happier that I was able to find some new stuff and take some photos after a week of stress and pain.