The Tree Museum is the name given to a 200-acre area of land in the Muskoka region of Ontario, close to Gravenhurst. On this land is an outdoor art gallery of site-specific installations. It’s open to anyone who wants to walk in the woods and have a look at the artwork. It’s a beautiful landscape with a long wide trail through the mixed forest which passes a big beaver dam, large areas of exposed rock and mixed woods and eventually comes to the shore of a lake. There’s a small house by the lake which someone once lived in which is now being used as indoor gallery and office space. I have often walked on this land, spending half days here just enjoying the beauty of the place.

The Muskoka region is part of the Canadian Shield, a huge area which encompasses most of the eastern half of Canada. It’s characterized by the ancient bedrock that has surfaced from its position beneath the more recent rock formations due to the shifting and colliding of continents. The rock here is at least half a billion years old, which is much older than the rest of the crust of eastern North America. There are mixed hardwood and softwood forests interspersed with very many clear lakes. The exposed rock of the Tree Museum is mostly granite, fissured and eroded into the gentle curves and hills of the smooth old skin of the earth.

Mosses and lichens have proliferated in the depressions of rock where a bit of soil has built up. Other lichen species are growing directly on the rock itself, or on the trunks and branches of trees. There are so many different species of Cladonia here - more than I've ever seen in one area - so I decided to photograph them as I discover them and show them here. This is ongoing work - each time I return I find species that I hadn't previously noticed.