
2024 Northeast Mycological Federation Annual Sam Ristich Foray
May 1, 2024
For The Love of Fungi Festival returns!
May 15, 2024Other mushroom clubs typically only have walks three to four months a year. The New York Mycological Society offers walks almost every weekend, year round. This is quite a lot of work for the small band of volunteers who lead our walks and we’d love some help from members!
Walk leaders
We’d love to recruit more walk leaders. Becoming a walk leader isn’t just a nice way of giving back to the club, it’s fun, and you’ll get to meet existing and new members.
As a walk leader you’re not expected to be an expert identifier. Your main job is to welcome walk participants, hand out hand lenses, give a brief introduction on what will happen during the walk, take a photograph of the group, deal with latecomers, navigate the group, set the pace and ensure the group stays together. Let us know which park you feel comfortable leading a walk in; it should be a park you’re familiar with, or at least familiar with the route the club normally takes
Assistant walk leaders
Your main job is to assist the walk leader, eg by welcoming members, handing out hand lenses and giving directions by text or phone to latecomers. You’ll also help with keeping the group together and with cleaning up if we are doing tables. You’re not expected to be an expert identifier, and you don’t have to be familiar with the parks we visit.
If you’re interested in becoming a walk leader or assistant walk leader please drop a line to president@newyorkmyc.org. Let us know if there any parks or boroughs you prefer.
A friendly reminder for all – please try your best to be on time and give yourself plenty of time to get to the walks. This includes checking the MTA website to make sure no transit delays are expected. Walk leaders regularly deal with five or more latecomers per walk which gets in the way of leading the walk and discussing specimens.