The orchard

2005-01-25 - 12:53 p.m.

For ten years of my childhood, we would go to Summit Point, West Virginia, once a month from the first break of spring until the hard settling of fall. Just before we reached our destination, we would pass an orchard.

This was the first orchard I ever came to know -- the only one, really, that I ever got to know in the sense of understanding its changes and being able to track the passing of time with a glance through the dusty windows of our Winnebago.

I decided when I was very little that I wished I owned that orchard. Not that I ever figured I would make a living growing apples, but I think just to try to capture a piece of a place so beautiful, peaceful and productive as that.

Near the road, just inside the worn, split-rail fence, the smallest trees pushed out a few frantic branches and looked mischievous but fragile. Further in the rows were the larger trees I dreamed of climbing into, resting along a well-angled branch like the apple tree in my back yard, to read or doze. Unlike my own apple tree, these would not yield the sour, inedible, wormy apples that rotted in smelly, soft piles in the grass. These would be crisp and beautiful apples, I knew.

In the spring, I would hold my breath, hoping that our trip would coincide with the peak of the blossoms, looking like a confetti snowstorm against fresh green. In the fall, I watched the leaves dry and fall from the trees in a stiffer, more somber confetti.

Ten years after the last time I saw the orchard, I was shopping for apples in a store hours away. As I picked up a fresh, red-green blushing fruit, I noticed the sticker adhered to its skin. The apple was from my orchard. I'd never tasted its fruit before. Carefully, I picked a half-dozen apples to take home and savor the product of my imagined future.

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