After Apple Picking Revisted

We went last week to pick apples, my friends and I. Loaded into our little car, we drove away from the city past small restaurants and yuppie boutiques and about a thousand antique shops. It was cold; we bundled up, heading out on our expedition into fall tradition. Chatter filled the car as everyone caught up with each other, spilling out the dramas and amusements of the past week.

At the orchard we found hay wagons waiting to haul us to the designated apple picking area- a nice, rustic kind of touch, even if it does shout “City slicker! Tourist!” at us as we listen to the 10 minute long tractor safety spiel. Still, as we roll past rows of short trees, everyone on the wagon discusses what kind of apples they want; what they will cook with the apples later; how much cider and how many donuts the will consume afterwards. It is good to see so many people enjoying the fruit harvest that is an iconic part of a New England autumn.

The hay wagon stops and we all rush off among the trees looking for the perfect apples. Of course, there were no perfect ones- there were hardly any apples at all. We had come on the last few hours of the last day of the last weekend of apple picking. Apple season is done. Finis. The galas and honeycrisps were long gone, and only a few rows of mcintoshes and jonagolds remained. Far more apples littered the ground than hang on the trees.

I began to think that I understood why Robert Frost entitled one of his meditations on death “After Apple Picking.” Even though I am certain that his apple picking experiences and my own had almost nothing in common, there was a feeling of ending about the activity. Fall had come, and winter will soon be here. No more life, no more color, no more harvest. Seeing the apples on the ground, some half eaten, some untouched, but none acceptable for our bags, was a sad thing. It left you feeling tired, though the activity was not strenuous.

This was not the harvests of earlier in the year. Spring’s strawberry picking was exciting- the first fresh fruit of the year, with a whole summer ahead! Lazy July blueberry picking by the lake, into which we all eventually fled the heat of the sun. Even the fight to get late summer raspberries still had a lively feeling as we moved into the bush, assaulted by thorns. No, there is nothing left to pick now, and I will head back to the grocery store (oh no!) for my produce needs until spring comes again.

But this is not the end of the story. We found fifteen pounds of apples to fill our bags with, and now we must use them somehow. And so the family gets together and we start to work. Someone blends oatmeal and sugar and butter for apple crisp, I make a pie crust, and everyone else starts peeling. Just like in the beginning, we talk and talk and laugh and catch up. Even the mediocre harvest is no drain on our good mood.

This may be the end of the year, but it is hardly a time for gloom. Halloween is near, then Thanksgiving will come, and then Christmas. Will we miss the beach? Certainly. But our snowboards are out of storage, there are extra blankets on the bed, and, most importantly, we have three enormous pans of apple crisp. And things never seem so bad when there is apple crisp.