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On the paved paths that wind through Akron's Firestone Metro Park, Don King was in his element.
His eyes were focused as they scanned the ground in search of wild mushrooms around the park's Little Turtle Pond. From time to time, he stopped to point out various berries and other findings to the pack of teen summer campers he was teaching to find and identify mushrooms. Collecting and removing wild mushrooms is prohibited in the Summit Metro Parks, but King and the campers were hoping to find some to identify and discuss.
Foraging — the search for food in nature — saw a surge in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic as a collective outdoor activity with built-in social distancing.
King, who lives in Kent, is known locally as The Mushroom Hunter. Even his red SUV is covered in white spots to make it look like a fly agaric mushroom — the kind seen in a Mario Brothers video game.
King's love for fungi started nearly 20 years ago when his brother-in-law gave him the "National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms."
"I just studied that thing front to back, looking at all the photos, reading about all the mushrooms. It was winter, so I didn't have the chance to go out and find them, and I just couldn't wait for the spring," King said.
Not long after, King began leading small groups of family and friends on mushroom hikes around Northeast Ohio, which eventually grew to a side hustle leading private and group foraging hunts. Since there wasn't much social media back then, he said it was difficult for people to find someone to teach them about foraging.
"If you did not have a field guide, you'd have to be super confident in what you're doing," he said.
King's not a classically trained or educated mycologist. His background is in sculpture and digital art, and until last year, he was teaching as an adjunct in the art department at Kent State University. But he's now built a career around mushrooms.
From Food Network fan to award-winning chef
King’s love for mushrooms is evident in the kitchen, too. He’s worked in restaurants throughout his life — though he’s not a trained chef — and he’s earned several awards, including winning the regional Vegan Iron Chef Competition five times. He also caters small events, weddings and parties.
"I remember as a kid watching Julia Child. I remember watching 'Yan Can Cook' on PBS. I remember seeing these people make French food and Asian food and fusion food, and it sparked something in me," King said.
Now, King teaches others to cook with mushrooms. At Epiphany Mushroom, a mushroom farm in Akron where he works as director of mycology, King teaches people recipes such as mushroom gravy served over homemade biscuits. He shows them how to dry sauté the mushrooms before adding butter to get them brown and crispy.
The mushrooms King uses in his classes are grown just below the kitchen, in the basement of Epiphany Mushroom. Epiphany grows four types of mushrooms for eating and for medicinal purposes. They're grown in sealed plastic bags until they're ready to be cultivated. Some are packaged for immediate sale, while others are dehydrated and powdered into seasonings or extracts.
"As people become more interested in eating the mushrooms, they become more interested in, how can I cultivate these? And it doesn't take a lot," King said. "You can get a lot of mushrooms with a little bit of effort."
The medicinal properties of mushrooms
The known health benefits of mushrooms date back thousands of years to indigenous cultures, but western medicine is just starting to catch on to all the things that mushrooms can do for the body, King said.
“There are things in lion's mane [mushrooms] that are great for brain health," he added. "Ganoderma or reishi mushrooms have immune boosting properties. To me, that's really fascinating. We're on the precipice of the vast mushroom knowledge that's out there.”
Mushrooms are loaded with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Recent studies have also found that they can lower blood pressure, boost weight loss and even combat dementia.
King's made his own teas and tinctures from mushrooms for the immunity boosting properties. The exciting part of his job, he said, is the potential to glean even more benefits from fungi by making concentrated extracts that can be added to other consumer products.
"Now, being at a place where we can actually send our mushrooms off to get tested, we can have them analyzed to not only know if the compounds are present, but what's the concentration?" he explained. "We can get some spectacular medicine from it."
The health benefits of mushrooms have contributed to foraging’s popularity, which is rising so fast that some states, like Oregon, have restricted access to some of its forests.
Foragers are free to collect mushrooms from most Ohio state parks, state forests, and state wildlife areas, but gathering mushrooms in Ohio state nature preserves, natural areas and many metro parks is prohibited and can result in fines.
King also cautioned against foraging mushrooms without learning from a guide. His best advice, he said, is to never eat a mushroom without 100% confidence in its identity. He said there are mushroom experts who are willing to help on social media, such as in Facebook groups dedicated to identifying fungi.
"You take a photo of the top, the side, the bottom. You post it in a group, and basically a group of worldwide experts will give you some IDs," King said.
Mushroom hikes in Mexico and beyond
Meanwhile, King is going global. He and some buddies are hosting their first paid group hunt in Xalapa, Mexico this month. It's the first trip they're hosting with their new business, MycoTreks. They'll spend the week experiencing food, culture, museums and of course, mushroom hunting.
“We want to bring mushroom lovers together. And it's not just about finding the mushrooms. It's also about experiencing the amazing nature that is in all of these places," he said. He hopes to expand MycoTreks to guide mushroom excursions in more countries, as well as more affordable trips closer to home.
King hopes the trips inspire more people to forage — both near and far from the Ohio trails where he first started letting people know about the fun of fungi.
