Dr. Brit Adler Treks Across Glaciers & Forages for Mushrooms

Click here to listen to Dr. Adler’s’s interview.

“Backpacking is also my way of unplugging,” says Dr. Adler. “I’m completely free from the barrage of emails I get by not having my phone or computer near me. It resets your brain. A lot of my most creative ideas for my research have been inspired by these trips.”

‘Backpacking is also my way of unplugging. I’m completely free from the barrage of emails I get. … It resets your brain. A lot of my most creative ideas for my research have been inspired by these trips.’ —Brit Adler, MD

Mushroom Foraging

This past August, Dr. Adler and her husband welcomed their first child, Ian, into their family. Although glacier travel has been placed on hold for a while, she says they still hike in the forests surrounding their Baltimore home, foraging for chanterelle mushrooms.

These mushrooms are easy to distinguish from others that are poisonous, she explains. As a culinary delicacy, she adds, they have an “amazing, powerful” flavor, and the couple uses them to prepare home­made chanterelle pasta.

“It’s a great excuse to get outside, do some hiking in the forest and we get a nice dinner along the way,” Dr. Adler says. “It’s so freeing to go backpacking in the wilderness. It gives me time to think about my research, career and future, and how I want to live my life.”

Carol Patton is a freelance writer based in Las Vegas.