Taking A Stroll With Paul Stamets

This is my first time, to take part in the Weekend Engagement Challenge. I have been aware of it for quite a while now, but I always seemed to miss the deadline, not this time though. This week there are six prompts to choose from. I decided to write about the person that I would most like to meet.

Tell us who you would love to meet and spend time with, and why you would like to meet them. Choose any person alive on the planet today, your family members are excluded, and talk about the meeting, the setting, discussions, or events that may take place. Answer seriously or with humour, the choice is yours.

There are quite a few people I would love to meet and hang out with, some of whom are on here.

Paul Stamets
I am at a point in my life, where I want to connect with people who motivate and inspire me. Who are focused on creating a better world. One such person is Paul Stamets, the world renown mycologist, who has studied the world of fungi for many years and built up a world of knowledge on their healing properties for both the earth and us humans.

He has written numerous books, my favorite being Mycelium Running, where he shares his personal records and research and also how mushrooms can save the world. One such idea, is how mycelium could be selected to to break down toxic waste and also to improve the health of the environment.

I have been using mushrooms medicinally for a few years now, and they have really helped to heal me, both emotionally and physically. There is also numerous studies, about how fungi, especially those grown from old growth forest, can help to heal people with terminal illnesses. Something Paul also discusses in his book.

I have always been fascinated with fungi and if I had the opportunity to meet with anybody, it would o be Paul Stamet, as my dream is to create a mushroom farm and who better to guide me, that the fungi King himself.

I would love to meet him in one of the old growth forests in America ( Mount Rainier for example) that he regularly visits, so that I could get to walk in his footsteps and learn to identify the mushrooms that he lovingly writes about. I would listen, so intently as he talks to me about mycelial architecture, how an inch of topsoil contains at least 8 miles of fungal cells. Mind blowing, isn’t it?

Then we would discuss the life cycle of mushrooms, which is essential if you wish to grow your own. This of course would lead into a discussion about the different types of inoculation methods and hopefully help me decide what would be best for me and the mushroom farm that I will be creating. Then we would move onto the different ways in which I could cultivate them.

I have watched so many interviews with him and listened to many podcasts as well and his knowledge is outstanding. To be honest, I would be stoked just to be in his presence and go on a silent walk with him. To explore the old growth forests that he tries do fiercely to protect. His passion and enthusiasm is contagious, I really do love the way in which he sees the world, a world full of solutions!

I would then invite him to come visit me, where I would arrange a wonderful gathering, a mushroom festival of sorts, where all of us fungi lovers could come together and share our passion and knowledge. I would be sure to invite @yangyanje and @riverflows, both of whom I would also love to meet and hang out with and hopefully one day soon it will happen.

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