The conservatory at Lincoln Park

We lock our bikes handle bar to rear tire and walk easily inside the conservatory. Vanilla, an orchid, climbs up the walls of the rear room, dry and bright. Circling again past the coy, fiery painted carp, we admire the ferns and walk out onto the lawn, past the empty enclosures that sun rhinoceros, and on toward a bench. The bench is dry and wood and later, when Sebastian leans back on it, falling from a big sigh, he notices the bricks beneath it read Albion Shale.

Scanning from the Friedrich Schiller statue in the south just West of the Eli Bates fountain where marlins are being wrestled and storks attempt in their bronze to rise up with the recycled water, I spot her. I do not notice her specifically, but her children. A young girl and a young boy and I wonder if they are twins, to satisfy the rare and strange occurrence of seeing two sets in one day. The other pair were found red headed and disappointed at the fence of the empty rhino pen.

As they scamper it is clear that the girl is older. She walks steadily, he totters. She no older than three, he something half of that. Their mother, dressed in a black top moves to her hands and knees and begins to, with fierce feline snarls, I imagine, play into the belly of the girl. The girl giggles and rolls backward onto the grass. The boy, awaiting his turn giggles and falls back too as the mother approaches his belly in the same way: her mouth open, from which I imagine, a growl emerges. This game continues and she takes turns, the belly of her daughter, laughter, the belly of her son.

She has slender, long arms that prop her up nicely, her spine level as her daughter gets up to mount her. The game continues. Sebastian shares a memory of playing Tigers in the dining room with his aunt. Parents do not do enough crawling around with their children, we mourn, as other children quietly run into the scene. I wonder how far apart in age the children are. Was the time between them planned? It seems, from thirty yards away, to be the perfect gap. The children seem to be sharing the attention well and she, full of energy and joy.

The grandmother stands up and walks across the bike path onto the grass where the young girl meets her, and the mother meets her and they fiddle with something. Jonathan! she calls, after a minute or so. How secure she is, I think, to let her young son walk about without her piloting his every discovery. Jonathan! she calls again. She drops whatever white thing she holds and her long slender arms bend in v's, her legs in jeans bend in v's and she darts from the carriage to the fountain in an instant. She lifts Jonathan by his waist, he hanging his body over the outer edge of the fountain looking down, looking into the well of water at coins and his own reflection. On her hip she carries him to the carriage and buckles him inside.

Sebastian smiles at me, he now laying just beside the bench in a snow angel on the grass. I begin to cry, and then to weep at the beauty of the dance that played out before me. I want that very much, I think. I want no thing at all more than my version of exactly that. The grandmother pushes the carriage slowly, steadily ahead, and the young girl points to a something in the flowers. Her mother turns to look. They stand for a minute before the mother swings the girl up hugging her, legs squeeze in return around her waist.

More than foraging

On the morning of May fourth, two pick-up trucks pulled up the gravel drive to the point where I was crouched and wrestling with our blue tarp, coaxing it to dry. The first up, driven by a pony-tail behind plastic rimmed glasses, told me her truck didn't lock and suggested she might leave herself parked there beside us to be safe. I thought, "sure" and then said "sure." Like a half dozen folks before her, she continued on the trail up the hill with an empty bread bag bunched into her back pocket, her camouflaged companion in tow.

May fourth hikes itself gently, my partner, our dog, and I admiring the monochrome canopy and undergrowth that glows under the West Illinois sun. We see ponytail and companion a number of times, with other jeaned and belted men under billed hats, all toting bread bags now damp and heavy as if carrying dogshit. We walk into a parking lot where Sebastian tiptoes behind a ruined building to pee. I, holding the dog, read a laminated poster advising safe carry procedure for hunters and their firearms. One should never run with a rifle, nor point it at anyone, loaded or unloaded. One should never use their rifle as a crutch to lean on.

Gone too far and no longer on the trail, we turn and retrace our steps, the view always new from the other direction. Ponytail and her companion are not far along on the trail when we stop for an amicable exchange. They are hunting morels around the base of elm trees. The elm trees are easy to spot, like that one over there, with the bark peeling. A beetle infestation has killed the elm population in forests all over Illinois. Back in the day, one could find eleven pounds of mushrooms around the base of one great tree, best during the rain when most others are inside. On his encouragement, she took me to the base of an elm and with her walking stick pushed the ground vines and leaves around. She spotted a big one. They grow up on thick hollow stems and blossom into lobes of brain peaking out just above compost.

I was haunted by my righteous voice as I stopped and peaked and yearned toward the base of all of the grey-ish peeling trees. Look at your desire to consume. Let go of your desire to collect, to have, to gain. To earn, to receive, to be prized. It burned and yanked at me, the desire tugging back in the other direction toward the bark and base of trees dying at the feast of imported beetles. Sebastian held the dog while I traipsed in some yards and alas, I found another. I found my first morel and in the discovery lay the gratification of a sort I was trained toward for twelve years in school. Be told, repeat as directed, receive praise.

The desire to find consumed me. Sebastian wanted a turn and was compelled to find one of his own, as well. So we walked and the monochrome sprite of May was lost on us, and the quirks of our husky's endeavors were lost on us. We saw only bark and the base of trees. Knowing which bark was elm was the first question we asked of the forest. Vertical bark, greyish, stone like, shallow to the trunk, peels at times with a chestnut brown skin like that on the coat of an almond. An elm. It was early for leaves but perhaps we saw the beginning of leaves and looked for them when asking the bark if it was what we were hoping it would be.

The pull of desire anchored straight to my ribs, the upper ribs beneath my clavicle and centered. I was, like a skier behind a boat, standing and dragging by the same force. Had I not been standing, walking on, I would have been dragged under in an arc beneath the water until against the river stones of the Mississippi River I found a grave to rest upon. I set deals with myself and the righteous officer that policed my want to want. This will be the last tree. The next tree will be the last tree. We found a treasure trove up a mossy rise and one by one we collected the morels into our tea towel bunched and hanging. A scrotum of fungus. Sebastian collected many and so did I and we decided that with some butter, they would make a fine dinner. A self congratulations ensued for much of the walk and more young chlorophyll effervesced without a nod.

It is alright to want, I soothed. Yearning provides, not the same but in line with, what desire takes away.