A forest of forageables at the Petersburg Rainforest Festival

Published 8:02 am Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Ten years ago, U.S. Forest Service ecologist Karen Dillman returned to Petersburg from the Cordova Fungus Festival and decided Petersburg had plenty of forageable food to celebrate, too. She rounded up a group of organizers and, one year later, helped start the Petersburg Rainforest Festival.

The Rainforest Festival focuses on wild edibles from berries to mushrooms, with an additional focus on outdoor opportunities around town. This year’s event showcased the diversity of Southeast Alaska, from divers bringing up sea creatures for kids to explore, demonstrations on the use of natural dyes, gel print making, a teen program on making devil’s club salve, and talks on lichens, glaciers, and wild edibles.

Some people painted en plein air or gathered berries and mushrooms on the Stikine River, or took a field trip to study the LeConte Glacier. Some hiked up Crystal Mountain or went on a half-day foraging trip. Dillman said that because the festival is open to a wide array of foci, each year is something different.

I was lucky enough to go up the Stikine with the group on Saturday. Meeting early in the morning at Banana Point, 12 of us boarded the boat, loaded down with empty bags and baskets.

We stopped at four spots including a meadow of highbush cranberries, woods full of hedgehog mushrooms, boletes revealing themselves under spruce trees, and a quick stop on a sandy beach with a log full of 15 pounds of chicken of the woods mushrooms. The sun came out halfway through the day and perhaps the highlight for many, beyond our full baskets, was a high speed, up-close tour of the Shakes Glacier.

Although there was one more foraging trip up the Stikine River on Monday, the festival capped off with a special dinner Sunday night. Five courses of foraged items began with a pickle plate of fiddlehead ferns, beach greens, bull kelp, and beach asparagus, blueberry infused gravlax (raw salmon usually cured with salt, sugar and dill), and a sea cucumber salad. Four more courses followed. They used wild mushrooms, berries, rose petal infused sugar, and local seafood and garden produce.

Next year marks the tenth Rainforest Festival, and the coordinators are already planning something special. They are talking of bringing back some of their favorite speakers over the previous nine years. Topics in the past have been based on local interests, so there’s no telling what the weekend after Labor Day will hold, except that it will be something special.

What was just an idea ten years ago has become part of the season of Petersburg events. Although it’s just a little less Viking than Little Norway, which celebrates Norway’s independence in May, it showcases a community where everyone involved does their part to make each festival better than the last.

For more information about the Rainforest Festival, go to http://www.akrainforestfest.org/.