Can I Eat That?

It happens every day. You’re on a tour in the beautiful Skagway temperate rainforest and you see a plant, mushroom, or berry and wonder, “Can I eat that?” Hunger is not something you want to mess around with. Some people even get “hangry,” which is when you’re so hungry you start acting like a jerk to everyone.

In today’s blog, we are going to help you combat hunger with information designed to help you answer one of man’s undying questions, “Can I eat that?”

History is replete with hungry people who died so we could live

At some point in history, somebody was walking along in the woods with a growling stomach looking for something to eat. This person may have stumbled across a bright red mushroom and thought to themselves, “That looks delicious. I wonder if it’s poisonous? Only one way to find out!” Then they dropped it down their gullet and waited to see if their hunger was satiated, they dropped dead, or watched silently as the Sun God showed them the infinite universe and their minuscule role within it.

Eventually, enough people were found dead holding various plants to create a list of what you can eat and what you can’t eat. The men and women who made this possible are gastronomy’s heroes. Because of them, we can point at something growing in the woods and answer the question, “Can I eat that?”

What can eat as I hike around Skagway?

There are all sorts of plants, berries, and mushrooms you can eat while walking along Skagway’s trails. There are also some things that will kill you dead minutes after you swallow them. That’s nature for you!

Let’s start with plants. A lot of people around here eat fiddleheads during the spring. They are newly sprouted ferns that are all curled up and kind of look like a green shell. Another popular spring plant are the fresh shoots of the devil’s club plant. I’m told that they have ginseng in them, so don’t eat too many if you’re hiking alone. There are many other plants you can eat but I don’t know anything about them. Your tour guide will know a lot more about it than me.

Berries are delicious. Well, most of them are tasty. Some of them are kind of gross and there is one that will kill you. The deadly berry is called baneberry. You don’t want to eat baneberry so make sure you have some identification book before you start gulping down every single berry in your path. Blueberries are easy to identify and are found all around Skagway in the fall. Lost Lake Trail is full of blueberries. Remember that bears also love berries. Don’t go so crazy eating berries that you fail to notice the 800-pound grizzly hiding in the berry patch.

I love mushrooms. I can identify about a dozen delicious mushrooms around Skagway. I can also identify quite a few deadly mushrooms. If you’re going to start eating mushrooms, you better know what you’re doing or you may die. Some delicious and easy-to-identify local mushrooms include shaggy manes, puffballs, oyster mushrooms, king boletes, and morels. One deadly mushroom is called the destroying angel because it’s beautiful, delicate, and white, but if you eat it all of your internal organs liquify. I wonder about the first person to figure all of this out and then I think about how their buddy with a wicked sense of humor named the mushroom.

Some lessons about eating mushrooms

Chanterelle mushrooms are one of the best tasting foods in the world and they grow around Skagway. Do you know what else grows around Skagway? False chanterelle mushrooms. Those things will kill you. I can’t tell the difference between a chanterelle and a false chanterelle mushroom so I don’t eat chanterelle mushrooms. That’s called using common sense.

While hiking, you may come across a bright red mushroom with white spots. This is a fly agaric mushroom, also called amanita muscaria. This is a poisonous mushroom that some people around the world eat to induce a psychotic state. You don’t want to eat these mushrooms because they will likely kill you.

In Siberia, the indigenous people had enough sense not to eat amanita mushrooms raw. To indulge in the mushroom’s psychotropic qualities, they waited for reindeer to eat the aminitas and then they drank their urine. You read that right. I’ve been told that hallucinations often included flying reindeer and this is where we get the notion of Santa being pulled through the heavens by a team of magic reindeer. Merry Christmas, indeed!

Have fun eating stuff you find in the woods

Here at M&M Tours, we want you to enjoy all of the fine delicacies the forest has to offer. Please make sure you know what you’re putting in your mouth before attempting to eat wild plants and mushrooms. If you just can’t help yourself, point to a plant and ask your tour guide this simple question, “Can I eat that?”