I went out for a walk yesterday at about 7 a.m. It was raining, and I wandered through the small streets toward Baxter Woods, a copse of oaks and dog walkers. And there, on the root of an oak, I spotted this beauty: a chicken-of-the-woods mushroom, as big as a turkey platter, fresh and glowing, ugly and gnarled, the both-and of foraging at my feet. I felt like I'd won the World Series. Quickly I pried it off the root, quickly I unfolded a bag and slid it inside, but not quick enough to avoid the side-eye of two dog walkers, who asked in horror, "Are you going to eat that?" "I am indeed," I assured them. I even actually said indeed. That's how much I enjoyed their horror.

I kept going, trudging up the hill to Evergreen Cemetery, where I crouched in wet grass like a lunatic lover weeping over a grave and harvested chanterelles here and there in my secret spots. And then, soaked, I lugged my booty home, feeling magnificently self-satisfied.

The chicken-of-the-woods spent a few hours on the kitchen counter, drying off, and then I cleaned and sliced it up and sautéed it. Two quarts for the freezer, and a batch for dinner, which I oven-braised for an hour with actual chicken, sweet onion, a cubanelle pepper, and the juice of a Meyer lemon; then served it over mixed grains (quinoa, kasha, millet, chia, and such), alongside a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and yogurt. Those dog walkers don't know what they were missing.

* * *

You know how I get after a successful forage: all bloated up with the pride of the hunt. But I'm over that now . . . I'm back to my usual diffident, couch-sitting, gull-listening morning self. Today I'll keep scratching away at the editing project. I've got a zoom meeting late morning. I need to clean the upstairs rooms. I'll undergo my exercise regimen. The week is wandering by, and I am wandering along with it. I feel busy all the time, but also a bit outside of things . . . as if the regular world is a train, and I am standing beside the tracks, watching the windows flash past and imagining the lives of the sleepers and eaters and newspaper readers inside.

This has been a strange summer: an everyday challenge, what with the rain and the tree emergency and garden problems, but also a detachment. I've been alone so much. I go for days, weeks, without driving further than the grocery store. I have no company but Tom for six days out of seven, and he is out of the house for most of those hours. My writing salon is a bustle of activity on Thursday evenings, and then that brief social bubble floats away into the rain, and I am back again, myself with myself. I'm not complaining at all: I'm good at solitude, after all of those years in the woods. And when I don't have it, I crave it. Nonetheless, like the rain, it's been constant this summer. And I'm starting to feel the mildew.