This work has been ongoing since my first season working in field research out in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. I am interested in mimicking the traditional style of a memento mori still life painting while using subject matter from the ecosystem of the Blue Mountains to articulate the intertwined relationship of life and death. The primary subject is the skull of an elk leaning against the charred trunk of a ponderosa pine tree. Sprouting up from the ashes are pyrophilous morel mushrooms and the stalk of a parasitic pinedrop. The morel is a mycorrhizal fungus which forms a symbiotic relationship with the pine, while the pinedrop is a myco-heterotroph who parasitizes the fungi to obtain nutrients indirectly from the pine.