This has been, for fairly obvious reasons, a hard year. Most of the institutions that define what I do for a living have been weakened to the point of desperation, if not outright dismantled — some inviting the vandals in, some forcibly invaded and hollowed out. It was a year in which I tried to explain to students that most of the research projects on our campus were under threat, threw together a local pro-science satellite rally, squinted at the text of the US Code to no discernible effect, wrote plaintive op-eds for the newspaper I read back in high school, tried to plan for what I’d do if immigration enforcement agents demanded entry to my classroom, and pressed on with projects whose long-term future is uncertain at best.

And yet, by any objective measure, it’s been a very fortunate year. I ran the Boston Marathon, and had a pretty good time of it, even if it wasn’t a personal-best time. I hosted a collaborator for a guest seminar on campus, and we took a day to drive out to the desert and see wildflowers, including blooming Joshua trees. I landed a sabbatical semester for the fall, with plans that let me spend most of my time with C in Seattle, from June onwards. We road-tripped north through Yosemite and Crater Lake National Parks, both first-time visits for me, and then took a long week in New England and New York City. I spent most of another week in Georgia for the Evolution Meetings, where I gave a high-pressure plenary that seems to have gone over pretty well.

I saw one student-led project from writeup to submission, review, and acceptance for publication next year; as well as the publication of a pretty big discovery about Joshua tree physiology and an opinion article I’d been working on for a while. I spent a week in New Haven with a friend and collaborator at Yale, where I started building my first-ever analysis package for R, and we made major progress on another long-gestating project. While I was in-state I also drove up to the University of Connecticut to see a bunch of old friends and collaborators and give a seminar, which seems to have gone over pretty well. And I spent two gray, rainy weeks of Pacific Northwest December on a writing retreat at the Friday Harbor research station on San Juan Island, where I wrote a fair chunk of a new project proposal.

So, strictly speaking, it was a pretty good year personally and in professionally.

This year was also punctuated with wonderful experiences in the natural world. When we pulled over to take photos of the view on the way out of Yosemite Valley, I spotted a new-to-me lupine with spectacular yellow and pink flowers on the roadside bank. On the spur of the moment C booked a cruise out of Bar Harbor to see puffins on a nearby rookery island; when we got back to dry land we rented e-bikes and rode into Acadia National Park, where we caught a brief glimpse of beavers at work on a lodge.

Later in the summer, on the return leg of a hike to Snow Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, we turned onto a spur trail for a view over the lake, only to realize there was a collared pika watching us from atop a boulder just a couple yards away. On an October trip to Vancouver, C took me to a spot he remembered in the heart of Stanley Park, where so many tourists have offered birdseed to the chickadees that you can stand by the trail, hand outstretched, and the birds will fly down and alight on your palm to see if you’ve brought them snacks.

So many of these moments were that much better because I got to share them with C. Shuttling between LA and Seattle hasn’t always been ideal, and truly the best benefit of my sabbatical is how much of it we got to spend in the same location, taking adventures where inspiration struck rather than having to plan around interstate travel.

We hiked to mountain lakes, and foraged for blackberries in a Seattle city park — which I baked into pie the same day. We joined friends for movie nights and dinners, in board game cafes and at neighborhood bars. We planned for grocery trips and coordinated workday schedules and watched increasingly obscure iterations of The Traitors.

Lots of other folks made it a good year, many in ways that don’t leave much photographic evidence. The Los Angeles Frontrunners’ regular group runs define much of my social week in SoCal, and the extended time in Seattle has let me settle in with that city’s Frontrunners, too.

There were some nice moments of connection with family, which I don’t get in LA — I have cousins in Seattle, and my more immediate family on the east coast, and we checked in with all of them.

The east coast trip for sabbatical work also included a lot of quality time with friends from multiple stages of a scientific career that has taken me between different states and even into another country. Extended time with a current friend and collaborator in New Haven, and the UConn visit included the first time in years seeing folks I’ve known since my first year of graduate school.

There were moments of broader community connection, too. Over months walking through Capitol Hill I got to feel like I knew a neighborhood on foot, and established some regular stops where baristas or cashiers got to know me. C and I joined the local iteration of historic nationwide protests against our thuggish government, and a month later I watched Seattle elect an experienced, serious progressive for Mayor, alongside a city council that will, maybe, help make progress happen.

This experience of 2025 reflects, really, a lot of privilege and a lot of very good luck. As I look forward to the new year it feels incredibly fragile, and I can see the weak points, where breaks are most likely — the precarity of research funding for my lab; the challenges of dear, personal relationships that cross state lines; the mounting obstacles to teaching students how to find scientific fact and reasoning in a sea of online slop; the looming threat of new and greater violence and vandalism from the people with the most power in this country.

Many of these weak points, though, are also where I draw the most strength. I’m grounded in my scientific work and my classroom engagement with students. I take strength from the people I can call on to go for a run or get on a phone call. I find some relief in the focused challenge of chasing a bird with my camera — a brown creeper that circled a tree trunk just out of reach for long minutes, or a belted kingfisher that taunted me from one end of Friday Harbor’s marina to the other.

And I find perspective in numinous visions of mountains on the horizon — Mount Roosevelt rising over Snow Lake, or Mount Baker resolving into view as the San Juan Islands ferry sails clear of the clouds on the way into Anacortes.

Any one of these moments seems too brief to matter, as light as a chickadee perched on my fingers, flitting away as quickly as it arrived. This year, though, they added up to what I needed. I have real hope — I have to hope — that there will be more in 2026.