Mighty Mother Nature
This is a post about grief. And apples.
Autumn is a time of weighty remembrance. Last year, memories coupled with fresh heartbreak bulldozed me. I remained flat and listless for an unimaginably long time. The year prior, grief played entire symphonies for days and weeks. For months. Now, tender recollections pluck grief’s strings—the song is still there, but it’s softer. I carry the tune with more fortitude now, with far more grace. I’m sure you know how such moments go. At this point, we all know.
Which brings me to the apples.
Every year I like to make a pilgrimage to a pick-your-own orchard and proceed to pick more apples than will fit in my fridge—more apples than would fit in anyone’s fridge, frankly. This city girl is really a country mouse at heart and the craving to be out in nature, away from the traffic and city sounds, where the sky yawns so wide it fills you with a sense of peace and oneness with Mother Nature…the connectedness it all. But I digress.
Because of the time of year, the emotions that pricked, an unplanned trip to the vet for the puppy and, my gosh, the rain, MOSTLY THE RAIN, I hadn’t been able to make the trip. Moreover, I usually go with a friend. For years, my friend K and I made an entire day of it, wound our way through cute towns in Pennsylvania, picked apples, visited a lavender field, went to lunch, and, finally, got homemade ice cream before heading back to the city sufficiently stuffed and carrying more than either of us had the upper body strength for (well, me, anyway, K is a strong lady). The last time I went picking, more than four years ago, it was with my friend M upstate and we wound our way through apple country, then had coffee and cute little sandwiches while sitting in a wildflower garden at Stone Hill Barns, that bright fall sun piercing the cool air. M picked the precise number of apples a reasonable person should pick. I picked my usual ton. Thus began the Great Eating of Apples And All Things Apple in Midtown. Perhaps you heard about it.
And so.
Last weekend, it was a rainy Saturday night and I was scrolling the weather app, because I am nothing if not the embodiment of Big City Livin’, and lo! For the first time in weeks, it wasn’t forecast to rain the next day. I considered texting my friend but then thought, maybe I needed to do this apple pick alone. Just me and the big sky, the orchard, all that comfort. Let the remembrance come, let me talk aloud to the ones who weren’t with me but who I knew would hear. It would be the first time I went picking since weathering all the grief. So, yes, I would go, commune with nature alone this time.
And what a gift it was. The moody gray skies that come after a rain, when the clouds aren’t yet ready to cede their ground. The neat rows of trees that carved lines into the landscape. The feathery grasses that billowed in the breeze. The ripe sweetness underfoot. The apples, still glistening with rain from the night before. The wet that made all the colors muddied and yet somehow vibrant against the soft day. The rolls of hay that stood like sentinels. It was all so perfect and peaceful.
I picked a half bushel of Macintosh—my eco-certified apple of choice—and was barely able to carry the bag to the car, upper-body strength, lamentably, not having improved over the years. I didn’t care. These apples were gorgeous, perfect. When I twisted each off a tree, the stem snapped crisply and easily. Like this perfect fruit had been waiting for me.
I set my 30-pound apple baby in the passenger seat and went to the farm store and bought more apples. I know. All I can do is plead a kind of temporary apple-induced happy insanity. Because yes, I bought two more separate bags—granted, little bags. But still. Still. The apples, the day, it represented a lot. More than I might do justice to here.
It was a return to something that I adored doing at a time that will always be marked as the after. After my mom passed away. After our beloved pup went to join his grandma. After we said goodbye to the most special home. This communion with nature, it offers connection to the before. Returning to it is a way of reaffirming this joyous journey, even if it’s marked with profound grief because you’ve been blessed enough to know profound love. Nature, in its grand seasonality, its unending cycle of rebirth, its glorious permanence, is one of the most comforting and loving ways I’ve found to stitch all my befores to my afters. The cloth might be a little thin still in some spots, but the thread is strong. It’ll hold.
❤️
Here are some photos from the day. I hope this autumn you too are finding some moments of connection and peace, whatever forms they may take.
