Slime molds are gorgeous (you just never knew it!) | Oregon Field Guide

These are the coolest kinds of nerds.

Fascinating video! As a long-time friend of Crow Vecchio, I have had the privilege, over the years, of learning about these creatures and seeing them through her eyes and camera lens. I have always been fascinated with ocean plankton and nudibranchs and studied them in college. But I never knew about slime molds until Crow introduced them to me. And watching Kelly Brenner as she searches for them in the forest in this video and listening to her enthusiastic comments about them reminds me so much of Crow! Kelly's collection of slime molds is amazing! I am so glad these two like-minded naturalists have connected and are sharing their mutual fascination for these creatures! Thank you to OPB for creating this beautiful video. Hopefully it will spark an interest in others to join in the study of slime molds!

the narrator speaks like what I would imagine a cute slime mold would sound like.

I had never reached baseline between trips so this trip just felt like the last one continuing where it left off. My body began pulling apart again, only this time in a rotating circular motion, as if the Universe was inside of a big tumble drier. My vision wasn't spinning, but my sense of gravity was spinning...like I could feel a strong force pulling me in a circle. As I tried to understand how that felt, I slowly began to 'see' (my eyes were open the whole time) the room around me wind up completely onto big spindles. It was then that I realized I was actually in a Universe-creating factory. But it wasn't creating the room I was in...it was creating my experience of the room. What was winding wasn't the room but instead just my vision of it. Like literally my visual qualia was unwinding into view. I quickly began to realize that the factory wasn't creating the Universe -- it was just creating my consciousness like a movie set being rolled into place. I immediately became aware of little creatures/men/elves behind me (who I was never able to see) working inside this factory controlling all of the 'reality spindles'. They were standing on scaffolding of some sort....raised platforms overseeing the work happening in this massive meta-verse that was unwinding my perceptions. At this point as my world continued to unwind and I was in this factory, I 'realized' I was breaking through. I remember 'snapping out of it' at one point, and suddenly seeing the 'actual' room I was in around me and thinking 'hoooolllly fuck I am tripping sooooo hard'. I had totally forgotten I was just in my bedroom, but instead thought I was basically taking a tour of this consciousness factory. I quickly fell back into Salvialand and this is when my ego death occurred. As I watched the room around me unwind once again, everything in my vision was unwinding and going dark. The unwinding was coinciding with my eyes slowly closing and I realized that the light I see of the world around me is actually just strips of this unwinding fabric, and that if I want to see what all of the fabric looks like when it's stripped away, I had to 'give up' all of my vision (this entailed me closing my eyes in order to 'hand over' the last of my visual qualia, so to speak). That's when I became surprised, because as my eyes closed and the last of my vision rolled up, the rest of me rolled up with it! My memories, my thoughts, my feelings, who I am, it all just rolled up off of me with my vision like a washcloth being pulled off my head. That's when I 'realized' that I was one of the workers in the factory who had simply suffered from a temporary illusion -- an illusion of life, the world, etc -- once that was unwound off me, I realize I was one of the little elves controlling everything. And what were those 'elves' or 'little men'? They were just naked points in space. I was nothing but a singularity, floating in the center of a consciousness-making factory, along with all of the other singularities who were helping with its construction. I wasn't a person, I wasn't an elf, I wasn't anything. I was just a single point of observation. The euphoria that came with this 'realization' was mind-numbingly powerful, and it carried me all the way back to the 'real' world again, until the main part of the trip was over. As I regained all of my 'human' attributes, I realized that what I had experienced was full-on ego death (something I had been wanting to experience). Although I wouldn't describe it as a 'death' of the ego, but instead more like a 'swift removal' of the ego....like my ego (thoughts, memories, emotions, etc) was peeled away from me like the way a magician pulls away a handkerchief to reveal what's underneath -- only in this case, there was nothing underneath. When all of 'me' was pulled away, there was nothing left but the pure act of observing. That trip also lasted about 25 minutes, and by the time it was done I felt an incredible burden of understanding, knowledge, and information. I felt like I had seen everything I needed to see in Salvialand, and everything that I could see. The famous 'if you get the message, hang up the phone' quote was ringing in my ears. While still feeling very strong effects of the Salvia -- but back in 'this' universe -- I hopped onto my computer and took down about 10 pages of notes describing every thought, feeling and emotion I could recollect about the whole thing. I decided not to post those raw notes and just post this summary instead. Coming back from this experience, at first it felt like I had been gifted ancient, sacred secrets about the nature of reality and consciousness. Now it feels like a distant dream. Did all of this even happen? Or did I just take a nap and dream I did Salvia? It feels so far away in my memory yet while it was happening it was 100% vivid, believable and 'real'. I hope you've enjoyed reading about this trip! I won't be going to visit Sally for a while, but this journey was one of the most incredible things I've ever experienced. Many people fear Salvia but she can be an incredible tour guide of the mind-verse when treated with respect.

Reasons to keep going and live.thank u.

Fascinating at this hidden world beneath our feet.

It is like going to another universe. Mycology was an amazing class!

Not me finding slime mold in my garden and instantly going down a rabbit hole they're so cool and now I want to find more haha

I love this! I live in NW Oregon. Corvallis, Oregon and I explore the woods as a hobby with my camera and hopefully I'll get more chances to document slime molds more often. I've seen a few but mostly I've done fungi and lichen macro photography. I'm obsessed with macro photography!

Im facinated by slime molds. They definitely need more study. I have no doubt they hold secrets valuable info for medicine, chemistry , philosophy, and sociology. There's no knowledge of how to make it profitable. Their group transfer of instructions would be fabulous to study.

Do you know what cameras they use? I love slime molds and want to photograph specimens

I occasionally see dog's vomit slime mold in my area, it is always such a cool thing to witness, nothing else looks like that around here. really beautiful and weird.

These people are heroes 💚

I did too know it! anything that looks like growing /living art with jello is beautiful to me!

What a great video. ❤

Such a great video! I love people that can appreciate the beauty in all things.

Slime molds rock!

Awesome ! We need more of this sort of study in our schools.

This wasn't the first video i watched on the topic, so i did knew 😅

Great video - Thanks!