Fifth annual Fungi Festival celebrates mushrooms, creativity and community
By Amber McCain
Rainy weather didn’t deter a crowd from gathering at Ester Community Park for the fifth annual Fairbanks Fungi Festival, a day filled with mushrooms, food, costumes and family-friendly activities.
Shani Kosinski, a Fairbanks plant ecologist and mycologist, said the festival featured mushroom-oriented vendors, a few food trucks with mushroom specials and displays of fresh mushrooms collected around Interior Alaska.
Attendees checking out different vendors at Ester Community Park during the fifth annual Fungi Festival.
“Today we're having the fifth annual Fairbanks Fungi Festival,” Kosinski said. “We have mushrooms on display from around Interior Alaska that were collected yesterday fresh with a handful of experts here that help you identify what you brought and what we collected.”
The festival was the main event of a weekend devoted to fungi education and exploration. Activities throughout the weekend included mushroom forays and educational walks in the forest, along with talks at UAF. The festival also featured Noah Siegel, co-author of Mushrooms of Alaska, which Kosinski described as one of the most comprehensive mushroom field guides specifically focused on Alaska.
At Ester Community Park, the celebration extended well beyond mushroom identification. A costume parade brought a playful spirit to the event, while children could take part in activities including paper mushroom hat making, painting and other crafts.
Local mycologist Christin Swearingen helps event attendees identify mushrooms during the fifth annual Fairbanks Fungi Festival on Saturday, Aug. 30.
Lexi Salinas said the festival seemed like a fun opportunity to dress up and join in the festivities.
Ryan Middle School student Kari Sanoja took that idea a step further. She made her mushroom-themed hat from papier-mâché in art class and created her dandelion fluff scepter the night before the festival.
Food was also part of the day's festivities, with several food trucks offering mushroom-inspired specials and a cooking demonstration by Igor Pasternak, an instructor in the UAF art, anthropology, and ethnobotany programs.While preparing morsels for the crowd, Pasternak shared his philosophy on cooking: “I personally don't believe in writing down recipes.”
From mushroom forays and expert identification to children's crafts, costumes and cooking, the fifth annual Fungi Festival offered something for seasoned mycologists and curious families alike. Even the rain couldn't keep the community from coming out to celebrate Alaska's fungi.