Bay Area & Beyond Foragers - Mushrooms, Mussels, Urchin Uni

**Register here, NOT on Meetup: https://www.forkinthepath.org/schedule**

Join botanist Lia in beautiful Tilden Park to learn about edible and medicinal spring plants of the Bay Area.
What if the land around you wasn’t just scenery, but a living apothecary and pantry, rich with nourishment and healing? When we learn about the medicinal and edible gifts of our native plants, we deepen our connection to place, to tradition, to ourselves, and to our communities. This knowledge lets a sense of belonging bloom inside of us, inspiring stewardship and weaving us into the wild and living story of our precious natural homes.
Join herbalist, botanist, and educator Lia Leibman for a guided walk through the Bay Area’s edible spring plant landscape. Along the way, you'll meet native medicinal allies like oak, bay laurel, rigid hedge nettle, and more, experiencing their properties firsthand and learning how to identify, sustainably harvest, and work with them for food and medicine. This walk is an invitation to slow down, observe, learn, and reconnect—so you can step away with the skills and confidence to explore the world of wild herbalism foraging on your own.

Class Date: Saturday, April 29, 2026, 10am-2pm

Cost:
$125 pay it forward adult ticket
$100 adult standard adult ticket
$75 adult community supported adult ticket
$50 child under 18 (recommended for age 7 and up, but you know your child best!)

A portion of your program fee goes to Sogorea Te' Land Trust

More Important Details
These programs are very popular and fill up often very quickly. We encourage you to register right away if you'd like to attend! If you are reading this, the class is not full. Space is updated daily.

About Fork In The Path
Fork In The Path offers transformational foraging experiences in California for the adventurous of all ages. You can check us out on Instagram here.

Register here, NOT on Meetup: https://www.forkinthepath.org/schedule
Three classes (not a series)
Sat, April 18: 6am-9am
Sun, April 19: 6:30am-9:30am

We forage at low tide!

What You'll Learn
Save Kelp, Eat Urchin!
Join us at sunrise for a sea urchin foraging class where we will help remove some of the overgrown sea urchin population - so we can eat it! We will teach you how to open and enjoy this incredible delicacy. You may have heard it called “uni” in a sushi restaurant, but it’s SO much tastier when it’s fresh. Take home up to 35 urchin - if you can carry that much! Learn how humans can be a helping hand to restore balance to ecosystems impacted by climate change. Requires a CA fishing license.

Where
A beach in Northern Sonoma. Exact location provided with registration.

Instructors
Ricardo Romero Gianoli has been living, foraging, and cooking in Northern California since 2008. One of his passions and career focuses is kelp forest restoration. Ricardo is a certified restoration scuba diver and kelp forest monitor who has surveyed sites from the Salish Sea to Orange County, but he focuses his restoration efforts on the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. It is his greatest joy to connect people with the ocean through adventure, food, and education in the intertidal zone.

Ryn Sullivan has been teaching and connecting folks to nature through food and crafts for over 10 years. They are involved in many sea urchin projects and are excited to teach Fork in the Path's students how to find and eat urchin as part of their holistic restoration efforts. When not foraging, you might find them teaching wilderness first aid classes, free diving for purple urchins, or crafting cordage from the irises in their backyard.

Additional support staff includes Fork in the Path founder Carrie Staller.

**Register here, NOT on Meetup: https://www.forkinthepath.org/schedule**

Grab your foraging basket and walk through the woods with Thea Chesney, who is a treasure trove of knowledge about this region. She will emphasize edible, medicinal, and poisonous spring plants of the Sierra foothills region, and possibly some mushrooms, too. With the elevation, the ecology changes from California's winter coastal sea-level flora and funga. We will cover tree, plant, and mushroom identification, symbiotic forest partnerships, trees, plants, and mushrooms. It's possible we can find elfin saddles, miner's lettuce, chickweed, cleavers, maple blossoms, pine and fir tips, and more! Join us Sat, April 19th, or Sun, April 20th.

More Important Details
These programs are very popular and fill up often very quickly. We encourage you to register right away if you'd like to attend! If you are reading this, the class is not full. Space is updated daily.

About Fork In The Path
Fork In The Path offers transformational foraging experiences in California for the adventurous of all ages. You can check us out on Instagram here.

Register here, NOT on Meetup: https://www.forkinthepath.org/schedule
Three classes (not a series)
Sat, April 18: 6am-9am
Sun, April 19: 6:30am-9:30am

We forage at low tide!

What You'll Learn
Save Kelp, Eat Urchin!
Join us at sunrise for a sea urchin foraging class where we will help remove some of the overgrown sea urchin population - so we can eat it! We will teach you how to open and enjoy this incredible delicacy. You may have heard it called “uni” in a sushi restaurant, but it’s SO much tastier when it’s fresh. Take home up to 35 urchin - if you can carry that much! Learn how humans can be a helping hand to restore balance to ecosystems impacted by climate change. Requires a CA fishing license.

Where
A beach in Northern Sonoma. Exact location provided with registration.

Instructors
Ricardo Romero Gianoli has been living, foraging, and cooking in Northern California since 2008. One of his passions and career focuses is kelp forest restoration. Ricardo is a certified restoration scuba diver and kelp forest monitor who has surveyed sites from the Salish Sea to Orange County, but he focuses his restoration efforts on the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. It is his greatest joy to connect people with the ocean through adventure, food, and education in the intertidal zone.

Ryn Sullivan has been teaching and connecting folks to nature through food and crafts for over 10 years. They are involved in many sea urchin projects and are excited to teach Fork in the Path's students how to find and eat urchin as part of their holistic restoration efforts. When not foraging, you might find them teaching wilderness first aid classes, free diving for purple urchins, or crafting cordage from the irises in their backyard.

Additional support staff includes Fork in the Path founder Carrie Staller.