No mushrooms this issue. The season's winding down and I want to talk about the thing that actually keeps this hobby alive: not taking too much.

What I'm reading

• The honorable harvest — Robin Wall Kimmerer's framework is the clearest ethics I know. Never take the first you find. Never take the last. Take only what you need, and leave more than enough for the ones who come after — including the non-human ones.
• Know the rules for the land you're on — Cook County preserves technically prohibit removing plants. Most foragers operate in a quiet gray zone for personal-use greens and fruit; I'm not your lawyer, but I am telling you to know the rule before you bend it, and to never, ever dig.
• 8 Forms of Capital and why scarcity thinking ruins patches — a tangent, but it reframed how I think about the commons.

Field note

I walked LaBagh with no bag this week. Just looking. Marked three nut trees for next year, watched a hawk, took nothing. Some of the best foraging days end with an empty basket and a fuller map.

— Jenna