Dead Man's Fingers

What?

Let me rephrase: 
The title should  read  Xylaria polymorpha - a fungus that, like all the other fungi, makes its living by extracting nutrients from dead and decaying wood.  
The individual mushrooms are elongated like fingers, and during their lifetime change their shapes and colour. They often fuse into bizarre shapes that may look like parts of a human hand. 
Thus the common name - Dead Man's Fingers. 
Sorry if the title mislead you you,  but I really prefer to talk about this strange fungus that I found on a dead tree branch reaching far past the edge of  Box Lake, near Nakusp, BC.

Just imagine this: 
It is an amazing summer day. Your kayak is gently gliding on the glass surface of the lake, you are stretched back, feet dangling over the sides (I do have one of those "grandma" kayaks - wide and safe so it is not a problem). The mountains are still wearing their snow tops but down at the lake the greenery is sprouting en mass..... .....there are the blues and the greens crowned by white. 
A perfect picture on a perfect day reflecting in the water for double dose of pleasure.

You allow sunshine and water to lull you to sleep. The kayak is carried to the lake shore nudging a dead tree trunk. The gentle collision wakes you up. You are staring at a very strange thing! 

Dead Man's Fingers hanging off a thick dead branch!

I must say that, having never seen this fungus before,  I was initially in quite a shock. It looked so real that it gave me creeps - and I did not know its common name then!

Human imagination! How powerful it is - I had to tell myself that this is something much more ordinary than the brain was milling about. Very neat!

Still, when the sun went down and I looked down at the fisherman cleaning his catch all I could think of was: Please take care, we already have a bunch of fingers on the other side of the lake.