Our Purpose

At the time, I had no idea that elsewhere, a trove of knowledge was being revealed by Mycologists that could, in the not-so-distant future, change the world. No, in my not-so-blissful ignorance, my only ambition was to be able to identify mushrooms so that I might impress whomever I had dragged on a yomp that day. Before each walk, I would scan message boards in search of mushrooms I would likely cross paths with, based on my geographical location, walking route and season. With a handful of mushrooms memorised in the morning, I could be nonchalantly reciting by the afternoon. I think my recitations were at least 20% accurate. My quick-fire method worked, and my myco-illiterate friends were none the wiser. I’ll admit, in the beginning, there were a few nail-biting dinners serving up my not-so-confidently identified mushrooms. I don’t actually eat mushrooms, so I was never at risk, the same cannot be said for my guests. When I was young, I believed a school record could semi-accurately predict what one could expect in later life, I, therefore, imagined that I would one day end up in prison, if only for a brief stint. Sitting at the dinner table watching people eat my wild mushroom risotto gave me confidence that my prophecy would come true*.

  After a few months of morning revision, I decided to go all in and purchase a mycology book, and it was here that things started to get exciting. For all those years I spent in school studying Latin, my ancient greek was amateur at best, so learning the Latin names for mushrooms was jading. For the most part, I didn’t bother familiarising myself with the physiology of mushrooms, it didn’t seem important at the time, but there was one word that kept cropping up in the descriptions of mushrooms, ‘ectomycorrhizal’. In a wildly out-of-character style, I decided to look up this word that was clearly designed to make me look like an idiot when I tried to pronounce it. A symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi? Exchange of nutrients? Carbon sequestration? Wait, they do what?? I was trembling. I had serendipitously stumbled upon the world’s best-kept secret. The secret is that fungi will save the planet. I won’t get into the details here, that would spoil the fun, but needless to say, I was hooked, and everywhere I looked, fungi seemed to be playing a significant role in shaping the world. Within a year it was decided that I was going to spend the rest of my life studying fungi. 

I would like to tell you that my journey with mushrooms started with some childhood fascination escalating into a life-long compulsion, but only half of that would be true. My mushroom obsession and borderline addiction only materialised five years ago when I deferred from my last year of University to avoid disrupting a flow of procrastination I’d been working on all summer. When the start of term rolled around and I was still roaming the South Devonshire moorlands, I resolved to make use of my year-long hiatus from time-wasting at art school. By ‘make use’ I meant to educate myself, a low priority in the fine art curriculum. In order to educate myself, I would first need some inspiration. Owing to the lack of role models in my immediate environment, I’d been thinking about cinematic icons I could instead model myself on. Who else could be so perfect a model of education than Hannibal Lecture? Of course, there wasn’t time to learn everything, I’d only started reading books two years before all of this so, despite my enthusiasm, all learning was a bit of a drudge. No, if I was going to become a Hannibal, I needed to choose one knock-out impetus, something that nobody else seemed to know about that would be sure to impress. That’s right, in the beginning, it was all about impressing people, and nothing stirs the crowd quite like obscure knowledge. There was another parameter which would factor into my decision-making, the apocalypse. My oldest and dearest obsession is with the apocalypse, zombies preferred but non-essential. So I needed some sort of horticultural or botanical subject to devote myself to that would also make me an asset to a survivor community in the post-apocalyptic world, and that is how I came to study mushrooms. 

  For a few years, I had comfortably settled into an area of mycology that ticked all the boxes; technology, saving the planet, and mushrooms. Mycoremediation. In Devon, where I’m from, fish populations have been shrinking, creating something even worse, a swarm of disgruntled fishermen. Why are fish populations in decline? Human intervention, mostly slurry and effluent runoff from local industries. The rate of decline, I thought, deserved national attention, it was a veritable scandal, and I couldn’t work out why it wasn’t plastered across front page news. I spoke with a number of environmental players in my quarter and discovered a few things a) politics favours industry b) regulators don’t check where abatement technology subsidies are being spent c) regulators don’t check water standards d) punishments are rarely, if ever, enforced (meaning there is little incentive to run clean industry) and e) strategies for industrial waste management at the local level are subpar. I put it to the internet and wouldn’t you know, mushrooms have a cure for that too. Inspired by Paul Stamets substrate-stuffed sacks, I was on a mission to create affordable fungi filters that could easily be installed along river beds to remove agricultural and industrial effluents before they reach the water. I hate to be crude, but if the inoculated hessian sacks were the horse and carriage, my immobilised fungi nanoparticle filters were going to be the smart car. Simple, right? Well, if I owned a lab, an industrial-scale 3-D printer and had access to river-polluting sites, then yes it would be simple. Sadly, I’m without any of those things, which is what brings me to the purpose of MyClogic.