Here's a post from our Food Services Manager, Alyssa, who also happens to love taking long walks on our hiking trails. Check out what she's found over the past few months!

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I absolutely love mushrooms. They are sort of a newly discovered phenomenon for me – it wasn’t until I started working at camp in September of last year that I noticed the amazing variety of fungi popping up all over the place. I couldn’t believe the colours, shapes and sizes I was seeing, and couldn’t believe I’d missed them before! It was a good excuse to get a new field guide to help me understand what I was looking at and the role each kind of mushroom plays in its environment. It was also good for a few laughs as I encountered some of the stranger names bestowed upon these guys! You can find a few examples listed at the end of this post.

Although you can find many kinds of mushrooms around camp in the spring and summer, the fall is their season of glory. I am thankful that God made these little instruments of decomposition so visible and charming. After all, the process of “living things becoming dead things becoming decaying things becoming nutrients becoming living things again” usually happens so gradually and quietly. We barely recognize, let alone celebrate, the wisdom of God that this process demonstrates. But maybe, as our eyes are drawn to the deep yellow or flashy orange of a cluster of mushrooms, we can let them serve as a reminder that God is always at His work – in creation and in us! He cares for the physical earth by providing the means to draw new life from things that are dead, thus perpetuating a cycle of renewal and rebirth in nature. And He does the same for us - He is present in our losses, setbacks, obstacles and pain, and instead of letting those things go to waste, He invites us to experience spiritual growth through them as we learn to trust His goodness and His plan.

If you would like to know more about mushrooms at camp, you know where to find me!

Alyssa "Dash" LaRocque