A hike in Gatineau Park a few weeks ago rewarded me with an opportunity to admire nature’s design, and the tenacity of its lifeforms. This fallen tree looked freshly cut, and didn’t represent the typical stages of decay associated with nurse logs that I thought was needed to allow a mushroom colony to take root.

The stopping power of these fine examples of laetiporus sulphureus resulted in me taking my time to explore this colony from a broader perspective, as well as the secret world that was revealed to me upon much closer inspection. The beauty of the gentle gradation of the orange hues and the undulating surfaces were enough of a distraction to take my mind off the mosquitos that had found me…