That Was a Nice Day

Scouting

We went down to Martin’s place to pick wild apples this morning. Actually, I bet they’re not entirely wild; I bet someone planted those trees, or at least some of them. It would’ve been before I was born. It probably would’ve been before any of you were born, and I know some of you got a few years on me. Maybe even a few decades.

We drove out through Martin’s hayfield and into the back pasture, where his heifers are grazing the last of the sward. The grass has stopped growing; whatever’s on the ground now is all there’ll be until sometime next May. It catches me by surprise every year, just how fast the pasture goes into decline. And now this: Another two weeks of grazing, then seven months of grasslessness. Seven months of throwing bales and busting through iced-over water troughs. I don’t mind. I look forward to it, actually.

Shaking

The boys weren’t in a great mood this morning and I can’t say why. It happens, I guess. They bickered and wrestled a bit more aggressively than strictly necessary, while Penny and I tried to ignore them. We did a pretty good job of it, too. They didn’t help much but we still let Fin drive back across Martin’s pasture and Rye got behind the wheel for the trip down our quarter-mile driveway, and this seemed to cheer them up considerably.

It’s been an amazing fall thus far. Warm. Dry. The foliage is as fine as I can remember. You stand at the height of our land and you look across the valley and you think it can’t get any better than this. Then one afternoon you’re driving Melvin’s cows down for evening milking and you see his big black and while Holsteins etched against the all that crimson and orange and you realize you were wrong before. Truth is, it can’t get any better than this. Two mornings later, you’re climbing into an old apple tree to shake the fruit down (and sure, the boys are grumpy but screw ‘em) and Martin’s heifers are gathered around, waiting for errant bounces. And then you realize you were wrong that time in Melvin’s field, too, because this is the moment that crystallizes fall. This is the moment you’ll remember in 35 years, when you’re no longer able to climb apple trees to shake the high branches, the ones that stubbornly hold the sweetest fruit. You know what’s funny? I first wrote “truth” instead of “fruit.” I meant to write “fruit” but maybe “truth” works, too.

Snacking

Nah, I’m smarter than that. I bet I won’t remember this morning, climbing that tree, the sour boys, the gathered heifers, the branch-scratch on my forearm oozing beaded blood. Or if I do remember, it’ll be in some hazy, generalized way, how the four of us used to gather apples every fall and I can almost recall that one September morning, the nicest start to autumn we’d had in years and didn’t Fin drive us back through the pasture?

Yes. Yes. That was a nice day.