The Hunt for Fungi + Dos and Don’ts When Hiking/Trekking for Beginners

Ever since our teacher showed us a picture of bioluminescent mushroom I was in it for too long now. Such a magnificent creature!

As all of you know fungi is caught between Kingdom Animalia and Kingdom Plantae, the main reason? These creatures have cell wall but made of chitin instead of plant’s cellulose and are heterotrophic. So that’s why taxonomist placed them in a different Kingdom of their own. Originally Fungi were placed under Kingdom Plantae but eventually with the birth of molecular biology taxonomist discovered that fungi are kinda more of an animal that a plant. Fungi can come in great diversity. They can be unicellular or multicellular, filamentous or in colonies, microscopic or macroscopic. The most famous fungi are the mushrooms, penicillin, yeast and puffballs.

With that the Ateneo Biological Society has conducted a one day seminar and field work on fungi with BS Biology students of all year level as its participants. This event happened last February 28, 2014. I’m a bit late posting this one due to my crazy schedule, but the activity was worth to post with anyway.

This is one of the reason why we need to wake up and see that nature doesn't cope up with our everyday activities. The continues drying up of rivers such as these will affect every organism. We should start changing how we live our lives. Remember the five questions of environmental ethics. 1) Who? 2) When? 3) Where? 4) Why? 5) How?

For the whole morning our group trekked the Canacutan Outpost until we reached a certain height. From then we spread and only took pictures of every fungi we came a crossed. During the afternoon session, Mr. Anthony Buaya, a mycologist, gave lectures on characterizing and calculating diversity based on the pictures we have collected.

Pjey Fidel. Thesis partner. Well this is a river after a very very long period of no precipitation. I think the time when we got this picture we never realized that it hasn't rain for like months until the ZCWD has announced a rationed water supply.

From Left: Frances Alexandra Ballos, Jayvalikka Garcia, Pjey Fidel, Joyce Cedrine R Jaugar. The 'amazing' people I got to hang out with. If you ever hang out with either of them prefer your brains guys!!

Up close. After 12 minute hike and 2 hours of searching fungi, we are unwinding in this dries up river at Pasonanca Outpost.

With my team. From left Angeline Villareal, Me and Mark Talaboc. We came from different levels. Me being the junior, Angeline, sophomore and Mark, freshman. It was nice to share some knowledge to them. I feel like I an old lady giving lectures of life.

Sadly, I didn't have any good shoots of the mushrooms and fungi we found because the camera our team brought was low tech.

The whole event was exciting but it was somehow rushed. It was understandable since the school is strict with our security. But honestly I hoped the activity lasted for about 2-3 days for us or at least for others to truly appreciate ‘biology’. I mean the activity was something a BS Biology student like me wants to do in a regular basis. To discover life not just in the four corners of our room but also  go outside and ‘experience’ it. Whatever it was that many of us has learned that day will surely be unforgotten.

Dos and Don’ts When Hiking/Trekking for Beginners

1)   Never ever talk while trekking a mountain. I don’t why I can’t shut my mouth up. I guess I wasn’t tired because I trekked but because I talked too much while trekking. It zapped all my energy so should maybe lessen your talking if you want to last that much.

2) When your adviser tells you to use jogging pants, long sleeves and rubber shoes, use jogging pants, long sleeves and rubber shoes. Or you might end up getting a scar like the one below this. That is nine inches scratch from a plant by the way.

Nine inch scar I got from a plant. So don ever question your facilitators when they tell you to wear long sleeves.

3)  When you already reached the peak, never ever drink cold water. I know, I learned it the hard way. One minute I was fine and not too tired and the next my blood was like leeched from me and I felt dizzy and I was 2 seconds away from collapsing. Of course I didn’t collapse! That would be too embarrassing. Credits to the cold water I drank as soon as I reached the summit. So no to cold water.

4) Do not use sneakers when hiking. Remember that sneakers are for streets, streets are asphalt and rough while the forest is like soil with fallen leaves. If you get lucky and hiked a slippery mountain, well good luck not slipping and falling. So better yet pull out those hiking boots.

5) Always use DSLR camera not the camera you use for your selfies. Based on our experienced we use a camera phone and we have images like these. Ugh. Not so magazine worthy or even Facebook worthy. Plus you can distinguish characteristics from this image.

6)  Remember to review your books on anything forest-related topics. There’s a 100% possibility that lower years or those who are ‘not interested’ in reading anything about ‘biology’ stuffs will ask you. You don’t want to be caught off guard, won’t you? And it will nice to share to have inputs on something someone do not know.

7) Always bring a match. Okay, this one I got from Percy Jackson and The Olympians series by Rick Riordan but it makes sense. What if some unexpected things happened. You never know, the forest is a mysterious place that isn’t 100% studied.

8) Do not bring unnecessary things with you. Bring only things that you know are vital examples phones, camera, water, food (if it takes 2-3 days), clothing especially sweater or jacket, a notebook for journal and notes. Other than that leave your stuffs at home.

So if you want experience trekking/hiking in Zamboanga you should try out Canucutan in Pasonanca, Zamboanga City. Don’t forget to get a permit from DENR before going J HAVE FUN

JOYCE