Fragments From Floyd

Even though the spiders are in their feeding frenzy of fall and lie in wait in webs draped across every forest clearing; even though it was warm enough that we knew we'd want to fall in the "swirly pool" with Tsuga when we got back down to the creek; and even though we were already tired and stressed from the day already passed, we climbed "heart attack hill" yesterday afternoon.

This path doesn't bother with the sissy switchbacks a "real" trail would employ to make the 200 foot climb in elevation less of a cardio-experience. This trail cuts directly across the contours, rising up above the bluff at the junction of Nameless and Goose Creeks, passing through the jumble of chestnut rails finally giving up the ghost under the hemlocks that are doing the same.

Once the panting hiker reaches the summit, the going is easy along our eastern ridge--at least with regard to elevation change--for a half mile, where most of that purchase of height is given back in a rocky tree-to-tree repel down the far side of the valley, skirting rocky outcrops covered in moss, and yesterday so leafy that there was not yet any view of the pasture and our tiny-seeming house in the distance.

All of this is the long-winded way of mentioning that, with the more or less regular rains, the fall mushrooms are doing quite well. Expect to see portraits of several of them in the coming weeks. But don't expect names for all of them, including the one pictured above. It is distinctive enough that a simple trip upstairs to the bookshelves later on this morning should suffice to get it at least to genus.

This one was found growing on a fallen log, and what you're seeing is the underneath surface. The tops were very non-descript as they formed earth-toned shelves, horizontal to the ground. This is a woody shelf fungus, and not your usual gilled variety, but a middle ground between the pore-bearing and the gilled kinds, with both gills and pores serving to increase the surface area for the production and release of spores that will keep the lineage going into future forests.

If you squint your eyes just right and suspend the notion that you know what this thing is, it isn't hard--at least for me--to imagine this as an underwater creature, a sea coral or colonial invertebrate community of some sort. It would be even more easy to imagine if it were a nice pink or orange, and believe me, I was tempted to make it so in Photoshop and see if you wouldn't guess it an ocean rather than a forest dweller!

Another view of a larger and more varied specimen is here!