Yesterday summer returned to Berlin, tinged with the pale light of not-quite-Fall. We seized the moment of its fleeting reappearance and took the S-bahn north for a day hike into the Brandenburg woods. The forest proved to be a place where life in the form of fungi cycled out of death, and death in the form of trees claimed by a rising water table cycled out of life. This Brandenburg woods seemed like a metaphor for beginnings that become endings and endings that become beginnings, a life cycle in a tableau of green, brown, and gold, with the occasional smattering of rose. It was a beautiful day for a reflective, restorative walk in the woods--a day made for hunting mushrooms. Let me set the scene. We entered the woods in Borgsdorf and followed a well-signed path through a wetland where we encountered a trio of ducks swimming through a mirror- surfaced pond on which duckweed and fallen leaves floated along with them in silence. Along the path we s...