Fungal Fingers Of Fate

Day 364: At the main entrance to Pack Forest and just north of the gate house, you'll see a small rise with a set of steps leading up about four feet and a sign which says, "Model Forest Trail." The whole area is no more than 250 feet on a side, so you kinda wonder what it's all about. As you follow the path, you may notice a grapefruit-sized rock with a legend painted on it, like "1000 Rd." or "Hugo Peak." Eventually it registers: this postage-stamp of land is actually what the name implies, a scale model of Pack Forest. Now you begin paying attention to the layout. Yes, there's the canyon, deeply ditched but of course without the Nisqually running along its bottom, and here the 1000 Rd. splits to make its eventual loop. As you climb up (a whopping elevation gain of about ten feet), you come to Kirkland Pass and the junction of the 1000 and 2000 Rds. Following the 1000 down toward the Mashell, you begin to enter a meadow (represented by moss) and there, right before your very eyes, is something which has no full-scale equivalent: the fungal fingers of fate show in the photograph or, as I like to call them, the "bean sprouts."

It's been several years since I first discovered Clavaria vermicularis growing in the Model Forest. I would assume that their spores were brought in with the load of soil which now beds the moss. There was only a handful then and, in subsequent annual autumnal visits, no more than a few groupings ever appeared until now. As I've mentioned previously, fungal diversity and sheer biomass is at an all-time peak this year. 2019 will definitely go down in my book as the Year of the Fungus. I was not expecting to find more than a few threads of vermicularis in the heart of the moss "meadow," but not only were they present in abundance there, the hillside behind them (all three feet of it) sported a Mohawk of fine white clubs in a strip roughly six feet long by a foot wide. Obviously, the mycelium found this year's cooler, damper summer much to its liking, as did I.