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Meet Dylan Goldfine-Middleton
Born and raised in Southern and Central California respectively, Dylan first came to McCloud on a week-long mushroom foray in the spring of 2010, and he has continued to seek out and study the diverse fungi of our area every year since. Dylan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2019 with a dual bachelor’s degree in Linguistics and Chinese Language, and subsequently completed his master’s degree in East Asian Studies at Stanford University in 2023, submitting for his graduate thesis a detailed historical commentary and complete annotated translation of the world’s earliest edible mushroom manual, Chen Renyu’s Junpu (1245).
Having taken up full-time residency in the town of Mount Shasta in 2020, Dylan currently serves the local community as a volunteer docent at the Mount Shasta Sisson Museum, offering English and Chinese-language interpretive tours to visitors from near and far. Professionally, Dylan works as a language tutor, writing coach, and freelance editor, in addition to his seasonal role as an experienced commercial forager providing gourmet wild mushrooms to restaurants, markets, and private parties across Northern California and Southern Oregon.
Professionally, Dylan works year-round as a Chinese language teacher, English writing coach, and freelance college admissions consultant. During mushroom season, he also works as a commercial forager, providing gourmet edible fungi to restaurants, markets, and private parties across Northern California and Southern Oregon. In the mushroom off-season, Dylan is an avid rockhound and lapidarist as well, ever in search of geological treasures across the American West.
Dylan is one of two licensed guides for the annual McCloud Mushroom Festival guided foray alongside his fellow expert hunter and good friend, Chris Farley.