Wild Foraging in British Columbia
7 minute read
At the beginning of August, my good friend, Arnoul, and I left the normalities of life in Revelstoke and embarked on a foraging adventure to pick wild huckleberries. We set off wanting not only to earn a living but also to explore more of British Columbia and live in and amongst the wilderness for a while.
We started off in the south, not too far from Rossland, picking berries in the heat every day for a week straight. The majority of the day was spent jamming to tunes out on a huckleberry patch, then the tedious cleaning process at the camp would take us right into the evening.
When the huckleberries were finished down south, Arnoul and I took our journey 1700kms north to hopefully pick them there as well. We were quick to learn that the huckleberry season there wasn’t looking too optimistic due to weeks of heavy rain and barely any sun, so instead we decided to pick and sell various mushrooms, in particular the lucrative Matsutake (Pine) mushroom.
Things were looking pretty bleak for us as we had no idea how or where to pick these sneaky mushrooms. Finding Matsutake is like finding a needle in a haystack but instead you’re finding a hidden mushroom under a mossy bump in a forest. Everyday we were hiking and driving long distances to earn sometimes as little as $10 - woohoo.
My cosy little tent at the huckleberry camp in Nancy Green Provincial Park.
One day whilst we were out picking, the car was running super low on fuel so we drove 2 hours down a heavily potholed dirt road to the closest petrol station. This petrol station was in the traditional indigenous territory of the Nisga’a Nation called the Nass Valley. In the shortest possible way of explaining what happened, the CV joint snapped clean whilst we were driving. Fortunately, no one was hurt but unfortunately, the car had severe damage, the nearest towing company was 1.5 hours away and the area had no phone service.
We waited to see who would drive by and within a few minutes, there was an off duty policeman with us, who called some guys from the village, who then rigged a makeshift towing system using a bobcat to get us safely off the road and closer to the village.
Just after they dropped us, another guy from the village drove by who said he could help us out. This guy (John) was in the process of building a camp for mushroom pickers at his property and offered us shelter there. Conveniently his friend staying there was a mechanic and, even more conveniently, a mushroom buyer (Simon) was also staying at the camp meaning we could pick and sell mushrooms in the meantime. It felt like a pretty lucky-unlucky situation.
The infamous Fly Amanita - beautiful yet poisonous (and psychedelic apparently).
Whilst we waited for the car to be fixed, we tried to pick mushrooms but we were barely improving. Our 67-year-old friend (Guy) with a walking cane was literally quadrupling what the two of us were picking combined. On top of feeling sorry for ourselves, it was pouring rain for the first two weeks straight and everything was constantly soaked. John and some other kind people donated us gumboots, dry warm clothes and leftover food to get us through.
Just as we were down to our last rations of food, the mushroom buyer told us there had been a COVID outbreak in the village and everyone may be immediately forced into 14 days isolation. This was pretty scary news, not just for us, but mainly regarding the safety of the Nisga’a people. The region is already dealing with complex health issues and has limited access to extensive healthcare, so a COVID outbreak here would have a greater impact on a population already at risk.
We had enough time to get a ride 1.5hrs away to the nearest grocery store and stock up on food before the Nass Valley declared a State of Emergency. From then on, no one could enter or re-enter the valley and only essential services could operate. Thankfully mushroom picking counts as essential.
Being basically stuck at camp without a car, no electricity and no phone service, we got to know the mushroom community closely, which was made up of either white, old-timers that had been picking since the 1970’s or the Nisga’a nation from the village.
It was mind-blowing and truly amazing to see a bunch of old-timers (mostly in their 70s) hiking in the woods alone, living the rugged van life, and pulling in crazy amounts of money every day from their casual stroll in the forest. I try to envision my parents doing the same thing and I just can’t even comprehend the thought.
Arnoul spotting a Coyote on the road in the far distance.
The old-timers were extremely welcoming, friendly and told us of their incredible wilderness stories. But after getting to know the pickers individually and witnessing firsthand the drama unfold, we also discovered that the community is also fiercely ego-driven, competitive, and very political. There is a whole world of gameplay that hides below the surface. In only the few weeks we spent at camp, a 77-year-old man threatened to slash our tires because he thought we were following him to his secret mushroom patch.
Conversations between the old-timers felt like a battle of who had the best bush story or the best story of their mushroom-picking triumphs. It honestly felt like we were watching (or were in) a reality TV show.
On the polar opposite side of the old mushroom pickers is the Nisga’a nation who, for some, don’t have stable jobs and rely on picking for their source of income. This income provides them not only for the Fall months but also for the entire Winter when they are unable to forage or work.
A quick note about industrial logging. Like most of British Columbia, locals and First Nation have very little control over the use of the forests that surround them, meaning that forests can be logged without warning. The exact same forests that provide them with income and food.
In the first week of being stranded, we were shown a nearby patch that hosted a great variety of mushrooms. When in this patch, we bumped into a tall, white man in the woods, dressed in official attire who said they will be logging this particular spot in a week. “You better pick it before it’s gone” were his words precisely.
Surely enough, that piece of forest has since been entirely cleared, the mushroom patch has been destroyed and will take decades to regrow, that’s providing the integrity of the forest soil hasn’t been permanently ruined from the machinery used during the logging operations.
That aside, eventually things started to look up and the universe gave us the break we needed. The sun came out, our mushroom picking improved tenfold, the State of Emergency was lifted, and Simon (mushroom buyer) successfully organised our car to be towed to the next town, since he realised it just logistically wasn’t going to happen here due to the scale of the works and tools available. Also, I think he saw our sanity slowly diminishing with every day that we were stranded.
Pure happiness on the morning of finding out we were no longer stranded.
Arnoul took this photo on the morning we received the amazing news that our car had FINALLY been repaired and was ready to be collected, hence the beaming smile on my face.
I’ve felt out of touch to the rest of the world whilst stuck in this place and my head feels like it’s been spinning in an infinite time vortex, but at the same time I’m thankful that I’ve been given such a unique (and strange) insight into this niche part of Canadian culture.