Our love of mushrooms was born In the drenched peaks, misty valleys and hidden forest kingdoms of the Pacific Northwest.  

Here amongst the towering firs, hemlocks, cedars and alder, one can hardly escape the charming mystery and fascination that mushrooms spawn.  For us, this enchantment created both a love of foraging and a deep interest in the unique biodiversity and undeniable link between human health and the fungal kingdom.

As a married couple and expectant parents, we began to realize the toxic nature of our modern world, and the seemingly inescapable influence that unnatural chemicals and unvetted technologies have placed upon our biology.  As we spent more and more time in the unspoiled wilderness, the pollution of our modern bodies became apparent, leading us evaluate the various ways in which we might be interacting with harmful chemicals on a daily basis.

One of the obvious ones was self-care products: soaps, lotions, shampoo, etc.  One glance at the label reveals a complicated mess of chemistry, and few pronounceable ingredients.  Many common ingredients are implicated in hormone disruption and even cancer; scary words if you have a baby on the way.

We decided to take matters into our own hands, endeavoring to create our own soaps, lotions and skincare products with 100 percent organic ingredients and no synthetic preservatives.  

Over time, it was only natural that the love of mushrooms would find its way into our skincare formulations.  It was already well-known that mushroom consumption can have many beneficial impacts on skin health and appearance, and that many varieties also benefit the skin when applied topically.  However, we didn’t realize how remarkable this impact would be.  As we began to hone our recipes and receive feedback from friends and family, we realized that our creations were truly something special.

It was plain to see that, as animals, our bodies and minds were shaped by the specific pressures placed upon them by the nature with which we co-evolved.  Our biology simply isn’t prepared for the chemical influences it is exposed to daily, as our bodies have only been encountering these compounds for a couple of generations: essentially a millisecond in our evolutionary timeline.

Our bodies are constantly exchanging chemical messages with our surroundings in a fine-tuned dance of chemistry, genetics, fermentation and bio electricity that has been honed over millions and millions of years.  In the modern world, this complex system is faced with a host of circumstances and previously un-encountered compounds that it never evolved to handle.