February 3, 2014

January 21-22: Field Day #2-3 Ranomafana National Park

Breakfast/brunch at the local hotely restaurant
We started our day the same, but just a little slower, slightly tired from the long night and big day of work ahead of us. This time we headed up out of the valley to reach a high altitude secondary forest just beyond the park entrance called Parcours Andranofady. Now that our first day was behind us, everyone seemed to have the hang of this mushroom collecting business. (Side note, I have decided to lump day two and three of RMP together because I didn’t take a single picture day three, so it wouldn’t be a very fun looking post. :P) We first made a stop to enjoy the waterfall that pouts into the park, the one we crossed the day before. It was beautiful. I love waterfalls, seemingly endless rushing of water, water makes me feel so alive, very present. There is constantly something going on during this trip, but I try to practice being present. It’s sometimes hard not to get lost in future, but I continue to remind myself to be here now in this moment, no matter how hot and sticky, because now is the best time to be alive. Little yogi tangent...onto the trail head!
Gorgeous morning views of the park waterfall

We quickly wandered into the forest. This time it was just Dada Paul, Emile, Danny and I. Rocky and Paul had to take care of some more official documents and couldn’t join, but it was nice having a smaller group. We were not too deep into the forest when we starting finding Marasmius. They are truly everywhere here, they love this climate, it is just a matter of finding them in a place we have access to, but it has not been too challenging at all. Once I find a nice collection, I take down size and color, because those are the two characteristics that fade as it dries up. We collect the mushrooms in tackle boxes, and I tuck them in with a small bed of moss to keep them moist. I name each collection with a number and a fun nickname like ‘cream puff’ to keep track of them. Dada Paul helps me identify the substrate, his help is invaluable. Everything was much smoother today. We knew what we were looking for and we knew exactly what we wanted to do. We came, we foraged, we photographed, we conquered!

Danny working in the field in the thick of the forest, so green
A tactic we started to adopt on this day, but that we fully adopted day three was to make a little base camp where I would have all my note-taking things, and everyone, including myself would scour the forest floor in all directions looking for Marasmius. Then we would put all of our findings on a mat, and I would organize them. In the beginning, this method was quite chaotic, people were bringing me mushrooms left and right and I could barely wrap my head around them, but eventually we all synced up and we created a nice pace of finding, organizing, identifying substrate, finding, organizing, identifying substrate, until we had a good enough collection. Because my little mushrooms are so small, finding a few doesn’t mean I have a good collection. It is really important that I find many of the same species so that I will have plenty of tissue to work with when I conduct DNA analysis back at SFSU. Sometimes we will find a super cool  loner mushroom, and it is so sad to have to reject it since there is not enough material for good work and good descriptions, but hey that’s science for you! We need to be as comprehensive and accurate as possible. 

Danny is the official photographer. All the photos are in editing, but you will get to see them later. They are incredible. Go Danny!

Day three we went back to the park entrance and hiked to a higher elevation to reach the primary forest. We collected the most fungi the final day, and it was also the hottest day. We were all moving slowly, but surely. We found a lot very quickly and spent the remainder of the day hiking around. We even ran into some lemurs (Aapalemur giseus), and we happened upon some rare lemurs that are difficult to see (Hapalemur aureus)! I felt so fortunate and lucky, and it was a wonderful day in the field with a lot of work ahead of us.

After three days of collecting, Danny and I had a lot of work to do before leaving for Tana again. We gave a heartfelt goodbye to Dada Paul and tried to start our work. The weather was not on our side though, and one of the most beautiful lightning storms came and hovered over us for a while. As Danny puts it “the sky was falling”! The power went out and without power there was very little we could get done in the pitch black forest with our little headlights, so we decided to wait it out, and just sit back and enjoy the best light show I have ever had in my life, and I have had my fair share of light shows ;). The sky lit up in different colors with different intensities of light. Pink was the most intense, when there was a bolt of lightning, the yellow, blue and green tones to the lightning came from lightning behind the clouds and muddled with the thickness of the storm. It was pouring rain so hard that just the back-splash of water from the ground would soak you. Danny and I cracked open some beers and toasted the storm of a lifetime. The light would ignite the entire landscape making it look like midday for just a second. Truly magical experience, and a nice break from our work.

Eventually, the thunder began to fade and the lightning became a calm flickering, and we decided we just need to work with headlamps and flashlights. Eventually the power came back on so we could use our working light and our dehydrator, but our bungalow light had blown out. It was still sweltering hot, so all the windows were open, and the insects just loved the light, and our legs! We were getting eaten alive, and no matter how much bug spray we used, they just kept coming. I saw some of the most crazy insects I’ve ever seen, and I ducked it out with a camel spider and scorpions! There were cicadas the size of my iPhone flying into my head! A huge black pray-mantis-like insect, and when I mean huge I mean it would be uncomfortable inside my Nalgene, lingered around the table. In local folk lore a giant black pray-mantis is magical and brings you god luck...I’ll take it, thank you!
We continued working tirelessly through the night in the light of our lamps. I kept telling Danny not to tell me what time it was. I knew it was late, but I figured if I didn’t know what time it was then when I went to sleep and woke up I wouldn’t know how little I slept. The sleep deprivation from working three nights like this, started to make us a little silly, and we started laughing at the slightest comment.

Happy little Marasmius family
At one point, while Danny was having a cigarette break, I lit a candle thinking that I needed more light, and as I am leaning into the light to examine some lamellae through my hand lens something happens. Thank God Danny walks in right at this moment, because my hair was on fire! I had leaned my messy bun right into the flame, and it just ignited. Danny, almost too casually (his version of sleep deprivation goofiness), puts his hand on my shoulder and pulls me back from the flame. I look up at him, barely registering what happened, but knowing full well that horrible smell, and I said “Did my hair just catch on fire”, “yup” he replies with a similar nonchalant-ness as before. We break out in a weird sort of laugh whimper. I finish my work, and start cleaning up the room a little, but I still plan on sleeping soon. Remember I have no idea what time it is. At one point, I look up and the sky is a light grey blue. What? No! Did we just pull an all-nighter? I am shocked, but get over it pretty quickly. We have a long day of travel ahead of us, and I need to get my wits in order. We toss everything on the dehydrator and hope by the time we are ready to leave that everything is dry. Good thing Marasmius dries quickly! Wow...what a day, what a night, what a trip! Now we leave for the biodiversity center, and a crazy day of travel.
Marasmius sp.

1 comment:

  1. HI there! I found your blog when doing a paper on the Madagascan Rainforests... I love your photos and I especially love the ones of the mushrooms on a leaf, I was wondering if I might borrow it? Only for personal use in sharing about environmental issues and always giving you credit for it. Please let me know, Tammy tlcukjourney@gmail.com

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