21st Annual Sicamous Fungi Festival: The Mushroom King Larry

Sicamous, BC – September 18th 2026

This Weekend is the annual Sicamous Fungi Festival. While standard tourists spent their afternoon tracking down artisan mushrooms on a variety of guided walking tours, our field department headed down to the Legion on Main Street to run an evening scouting mission. 

Right past the twilight lampposts in front of Brothers, we ran directly into who we could only assume was the Mushroom King, Larry, marching down the concrete sidewalk with a full, decorated entourage. Draped in vibrant fungal regalia and moving with rhythmic purpose, Larry and his court graciously paused their procession to hand our desk the inside scoop on what the Sicamous Fungi Festival is all about. 

One of the Kings council remarked that the festival was much like a reunion. We didn’t really understand this. We had never seen any of these people before in our lives, but I guess they all seemed to know each other. They mentioned how there were over Three million inhabitants in Larry’s Mushroom kingdom, ranging from Mushrooms where you can have as much as you want to ones where you can only have a little. They talked about their experiences convening with nature while foraging, and clearly the King’s entourage was in full celebration mode for the autumn caps had arrived. As the parade continued its procession down to the Legion our minds began to wonder.

This is not the sinister impression our research had given us of the Mushroom Kingdom. Our newsroom’s internal research engine had dug deep into the soil and found reason for an evolutionary fear of the fungal kingdom. 

RELATIVE TO HUMANS

When looking at the data we had collected the first thing we noticed was that unlike plants, mushrooms do not care about sunlight. They are consumers, just like predatory animals. When you walk through the Shuswap woods, you aren’t looking at harmless vegetation; you are looking at the ultimate survival opportunists. Weirder yet we discovered Mushrooms are genetically closer to humans and animals than they are to plants. We are uncertain whether vegetarians are aware of this, but they may want to consider removing them from their diet for ethical reasons. 

THE SPORES WITHIN US

Further down the rabbit hole yet, our medical logs confirm that fungi routinely treat the human body as raw, organic real estate. The moment a person’s biological immune barriers drop, native yeasts like Candida seize the territory. In rare, terrifying clinical parameters, environmental spores inhaled from common valley mulch can literally take root inside healed pulmonary tissue scars. The fungus will spin a dense, tangled, rolling physical mass of mold threads medically known as an Aspergilloma, or a “fungus ball”, directly inside a living human lung cavity. 

ANT ZOMBIES

Even worse? Look at the parasitic family of Cordyceps tracking the insect world. It burns a chemical hole straight through an ant’s outer shell, takes over the physical steering wheels of its muscles, and drives the live insect like a stolen vehicle to a precise leaf coordinate determined for optimal growth of its offspring before erupting a massive spore-stalk straight out of the back of its now dead host’s head. 

THE MYCELIUM KINGDOM AND ITS PHALIC NATURE

The physical mushroom we see popping out of the forest logs isn’t actually the main organism, it is merely the temporary reproductive delivery tool of a massive, invisible underground network called the mycelium. To put it in the raw, unfiltered terminology of the local coffee counters: the mushroom is the literal “genitialia” of the underground web. It rushes water upward, shoots billions of reproductive spores into the Shuswap wind, and shrivels up as it rots away into thin air within days. The true, thread like white body remains entirely safe, hidden, and alive deep beneath our feet. 

THE HEARALDS MESSAGE 

Now while in the presence of the Kings Court we were repetitively reassured that we were letting the biology of the mushroom frighten us. We were told we suffer from anthropocentric bias (viewing the world strictly through a human lens), which makes normal biological functions feel deeply unsettling. Apparently if you look closely at the normal biology of humans, animals, or plants, it is just as bizarre and disturbing, we are just desensitized to it. Supposedly Fungi aren’t creepy, they’re just efficient.

As the Royal Retinue reached the Legion we were greeted by the festival organizers, given a brief tour and informed that we could return tomorrow with our yard mushrooms for safe identification and a taste of soup. We’re excited about this because it should give us an indication of whether the behaviour of our back yard masked bandits is normal or being manipulated by a silent underground sentient being. The “cooneys” had recently chowed down on our shoes and this seemed like abnormal behaviour. 

The festival continued on into the night with a live performance by the Blind Bay Blues Band and goes all weekend. 

Saturday Sunday you can head upstairs at the Sicamous Legion for a taste of soup by donation and to get your mushrooms identified. The Sicamous Public Library is hosting educational presentations and downstairs at the Legion is their ever popular meat draw as well as live music. And remember Sicamous, you aren’t just walking through our sleepy tourist paradise, you are walking across a massive, sentient, invisible underground empire represented by King Larry.

Authored by Arts and Leisure

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