Janet and I have hiked together since we first started dating in 2012. For all the time we’ve spent together outdoors, I never really noticed mushrooms until I started looking.

There is still so much we don’t know about fungi; they weren’t even considered their own kingdom until 1969 - the year humans landed on the moon. Researchers estimate that over 90 percent of fungal species are still undocumented. Despite our ignorance, fungi quietly go about sustaining us: creating webs of mychorrhizal networks upon which the vast majority of plant life depends, neutralizing our most toxic waste, providing life-saving medicine (including some Covid vaccines), leavening our bread, fermenting our wine, regulating our digestive tracts, decomposing our bodies when we die. We ignore them at our peril, as they are also the source of the most deadly pathogens known to earth, dooming dozens of species to extinction.

The older I grow, the more I am surprised and delighted by how the world reveals itself. Many of our dear friends and family have expressed the joy they have felt as parents in experiencing the world anew through the eyes of their children. I suppose if I’m honest, I would confess to fearing that life without them would become stale in middle age. But this year, I found nothing could be further from the truth, marveling at how, whether by magic or miracle, spores of curiosity germinate and bear the fruit of recognition, familiarity, obsession, and love.

Maybe the spores got to my brain, but I’m not exactly speaking metaphorically when I say that this year, I felt like Mother Nature’s favorite child. As I reflect on the year, the river of memory floods my mind with overwhelming evidence of the persistent and quiet care of a loving and generative force that seemed delighted to be acknowledged:

The moonrise over painted hills in the absolute silence of the desert. Eating the mulberries, purslane, goosefoot, and lettuce I didn’t plant or tend. Finding my first wild ramps - first with my nose, then with my eyes, then with my hands, then with my tongue. Flocks of white pelicans landing onto glassy, steaming water moments before sunrise. Patches of lady’s slippers growing along the shores of Lake Superior: the most delicate beauty arising at the site of one of the most brutal winters in North America only months before. Standing so close to a family of river otters eating breakfast that you could hear the cracking fish bones. The utter delight of splashing in the sparkling summer waters of Lake Michigan.

Of course, not all of my naturalist dreams were fulfilled: A wetland reserve in Northern California was a field of dust. I’ve still never had the serendipity to encounter a ripe paw paw. My morel hunt came up empty handed.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

In my 11th grade English class, we were required to memorize and reproduce an extended excerpt from Thoreau’s Walden on every exam of the year. Memorization has fallen on hard times in the digital age, but I would be hard-pressed to name another skill, discussion, or experience I had in high school that I have considered as often in the subsequent years as this text; it wanders through my mind during nearly all of the comfortable silences Janet and I share together outdoors.

What did the woods have to teach me this year? To the untrained eye, to those who rush through, or even to those who fail to sit and wait in silence, the woods can appear empty. We are quick to make pronouncements in defense of our vision of reality. But maybe it’s the wrong season. Maybe we are looking up when we should be looking down. Maybe we are blinded by our schema that says mushrooms only grow where it’s wet. Maybe we’ve never even bothered to leave the house or car to go check. For me, the parallels to the spiritual life are impossible to miss.

We are not owed encounters, neither in nature nor with the divine, but, to quote another oft-memorized text, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” This was the year that I looked (and Janet indulged me), and I am overcome by what I received.

In the most memorable book I read this year, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer prescribes the sacred law of reciprocity as a balm to our dealings with one another and the natural world. I’m afraid I don’t yet understand how to reciprocate what I have been given in this life, but I’ll start with delight. I hope you sense it in these words and images here, and that it calls to mind the voice of your own inner child.

One final note I can’t fail to mention. I took hundreds of photos of mushrooms this year. In most of them there is at least a thumb that doesn’t belong to me. These are a few of the photos where there is a bit more of her. I hope each of you is as fortunate to have someone in your life who supports your wild heart with as much generosity and long suffering.

Oh - did you think “year in review” meant we would tell you what we did this year? The summary, minus the mushroom facts and Lindsay’s sermonizing, below.

December 2021

We ended 2021 with a trip to enjoy the unique beauty of western Texas and New Mexico, including the Guadalupe Mountains, the Organ Mountains, White Sands, and Carlsbad Caverns.

January 2022

We welcomed the new year with a trip to New York to visit Esha and Kelvin, eating too much (as usual). The “eating too much” trend continued with our Chinese New Year Feast. This year, Lindsay was delighted to have made her own contributions to the family dumpling legacy, as well as featuring her homemade lap cheong, lap yuk, Sichuan salt pork, cha siew, and sweet fermented rice. At the end of the month, Lindsay celebrated her graduation from the social square dancing program hosted by Chitown Squares, in what persisted as one of the most joyful memories of the year.

February 2022

We braved the wintery weather in February for a short trip to southwest Michigan, including an attempt to reclaim our long-dormant downhill skiing skills. One of us kept falling… we’ll let you guess who.

March 2022

Life’s happiest moments are often unaccompanied by photos. We were spoiled in March to make another trip to Michigan, this time to visit Lindsay’s long-time friend Katie and her husband Brandon for pancakes, beer, and hot-tub philosophizing under the Worm moon. Hot-pot with the Allstate crew and craft-night with Lindsay’s colleague Cassandra closed the month with our gratitude for friends, new and old.

April 2022

In April we made our first trip to the Illinois state capitol, en route to St. Louis. The Lincoln home must not have made much of an impression, as we have no pictures. Truly, it was just a roadside attraction on our annual pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Pappy, home of the world’s best barbeque pork ribs. An Easter meal with friends from Holy Trinity rounded out the religious experiences for the month, and was one of our most heart-warming memories.

On a more devilish note - April was also the month in which we signed up to take a hip-hop class at a local dance studio. One of us failed more spectacularly than the other… we’ll let you guess who.

May 2022

With warmer weather, we were excited to enjoy Chicago again, enjoying performances from Ayodele Drum & Dance (a highlight of the year!), the South Asia Institute and Tight Ship Comedy. We even ventured out of the city to join up with friends in Hammond, IN. On a less positive note, our water heater broke, resulting in a very expensive repair and two weeks of showering at the Chicago Park District.

June 2022

Despite growing up in Michigan, Lindsay had never traveled to the UP. In June we remedied that misfortune, visiting the clear, bubbling Lake Kitch-iti-kipi, viewing magnificent sandhill cranes at the Seney Wildlife refuge, spotting foxes while kayaking on the Manistique River, marveling at the tannin-stained Tahquamenon Falls, hiking along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and stealing some quiet moments of relaxation along the shores of Lake Superior. We rounded out the UP experience with a joyful day riding a tandem bike around Mackinac Island.

Throughout the rest of the month we enjoyed a visit from Esha and Kelvin, an invitation to the 8th grade graduation of Lindsay’s former students at Orozco, and a weekend camping trip to the Indiana Dunes with friends from Allstate.

July 2022

July opened with a short but sweet visit to Ohio to visit Lindsay’s family. Throughout the rest of the month we enjoyed a Chicago summer - our first since Lindsay started teaching. We explored several parks in surrounding Cook county, celebrated a wedding and barbecue with friends, and indulged in evening picnics and concerts in the park.

August 2022

In August we initiated our plan to explore each area surrounding a stop on the CTA “L” system, as dictated by drawing of cards + Janet’s complicated algorithm. Luck sent us to the far north side in quick succession: first to the Oakton Skokie stop on the Yellow Line and later to the Noyes Purple Line stop in Evanston.

Throughout the month we were delighted to meet up with out-of-town guests Nathan, Katie, and Brandon, and to watch our first Chicago Sky game (Chicago’s women’s basketball team). One of us immediately wanted to become season ticket holders after the game… we’ll let you guess who.

September 2022

We spent the weekend of Mid-Autumn Festival enjoying another beautiful camping trip to Indiana Dunes with Gabriela and Eni. Perhaps because this was Lindsay’s first Chicago fall that wasn’t overshadowed by the start of the school year, it seemed like one of the most beautiful autumns in recent memory, and we were thankful to be able to enjoy so much time outdoors both in and out of the city.

October 2022

No longer beholden to the school year schedule, we were happy to be able to take an extended trip this fall to central Oregon. While it’s hard to compete with the Oregon coast, the volcanic fields and national forests here have their own beauty.

On the way home we stopped in Seattle to meet up with friends Sneha, Jamie and their families.

November 2022

In November we spent a long weekend glorying in the final warm days of fall, indulging in seafood along Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, and staying up late to watch the lunar eclipse. We found our lion’s mane and chicken of the woods mushrooms here - our first time foraging for mushrooms we were confident enough in identifying to cook and eat. Thankfully, no one died.

At the end of the month we celebrated Thanksgiving with family in Columbus and Cuyahoga Falls Ohio - time we are always grateful for (despite the damper that OSU’s loss put on the festivities).

The month closed on a sad note, as we said goodbye to our betta fish, Luca.

As we remember Luca, may we love each other more dearly. May we learn to care for every living thing as we endeavored to care for his life, and may his memory bless our lives with love and caring.

In loving memory of Luca 11/2021-11/2022.