Here’s a celebration we couldn’t pass up: the 21st Annual Mount Hood Salmon, Mushroom & Bigfoot Festival. The title pretty much says it all. This is a gourmet gathering of folks devoted to perhaps the most succulent fish in the sea, the planet’s most delectable fungi and a large, semi-mythical creature.
The Cascade Geographical Society, the folks who will be putting on the Oct. 6 – 7 celebration, will be summoning some of the best salmon and mushrooms you’ve ever tasted. A tad harder to book is Bigfoot – but that doesn’t mean there won’t be Sasquatch Talks on both Saturday and Sunday.
Mount Hood Village is the site is the site of the singular shindig, one celebrating the salmons’ return to the streams surrounding Mount Hood and the wild mushrooms carpeting its lush green forest floor.
The Mount Hood gathering is a holistic sort of event. Native American storytelling, original folk music, arts, crafts and habitat walks make this a different sort of celebration, one that’s intrinsically indicative of this land and its people.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn just how to identify wild mushrooms, delineating between those that are edible and those that aren’t, this is a good place to go. Mushroom ID should be high on the list of things to do.
The backdrop for all this (aside from the magnificent topography) is incredible music. Folk, pop, light rock and blues are all on tap. It will be performed by singer-songwriters from the greater Portland area.
This is a family-oriented festival, one that includes a scarecrow-making contest. Make sure your kids save room for huckleberry treats – milkshakes, tarts, tea and candy. They’re all for sale.
What’s not for sale is the ambiance of the Pacific Northwest. It saturates the fall season. To make sure you’re not saturated (it has been known to rain up there) most of the festival is indoors. The remainder of the goings-on will be beneath shelters and a couple of large tents.
(Image: eddy_)
