Life cycle

I spent the day dancing with thunderstorms when hiking in Pisgah National Forest. I was heading back to my car when I saw these mushrooms growing on a decaying log. The scene told to me the whole story of that small patch of forest. The rotting log was once a majestic Eastern Hemlock, growing in a stand of other Hemlocks along a stream. The tree had dispersed in its lifetime millions of seeds and I saw those decedents now populating the forest around me. And somewhere in there the tree lost its vigor and died. Now those elements of the forest that breakdown and recycle every living thing have gone to work. The mushrooms are creating the resources that will support the next generation that will nurture the generation after that and so on, ad-infinitum. The circle-never broken.