This year I have picked apples. Apples from old trees, apples from tangled trees; yellow apples and red and the green as well; and they have fed me well. It is no work to eat when the apples are dropping. Fill your basket, slice them well, cook them together; and they provide a nourishing porridge, a nourishing staple for sustaining the daily work. Apples from the ancestors, apples from the hundred-years'-earth-people, apples from the pomice-heap, the yore-days' grafter's skill. Green apples hard and tart, crab-apples soft and sweet, yellow apples like the bread of the earth, red apples good to eat: in this land where the old sowed, the new may eat.
Although people are rich these days, they are poor indeed, for what is good is neglected. Watch as the apples, good apples, the bread of the earth—see as they fall, fall down, down to hard ground, fall and bruise and grow soft and rot, as they go to the wasps and then dwindle away upon black earth, upon grey stone, here where many decades hence they were tended, centuries ago sown excellently by the people who came before. Are there those among us who will take up the fruit of the earth, sweet to drink from excellent trees, from wondrous deities dwelling in this broad valley, in this mountain-land where the thrush sings, where the meadow-rue blooms? Are there those who will take them up, gather them up, those who will give thanks and work hard, who will cut and cook and slice and dry, who will make the gift live on, who will cause the Excellent Path to live? I see the people, the multitudes coming and going, hurrying north and hurrying south along the bustly road, here and gone in an instant, and why are they all going other than here, as if they were mad, as if they saw what was excellent and did not want it, saw a gift divinely given and decided to steal instead, like a person given some old dead leaves and some young new sweet shoots, who chooses the old dead leaves? Old dead leaves stamped with dead men’s faces—see, a bluebird would not fall for that!
I heard you speak, heard you say in response, saying, They are for the deer, maybe the cows, They do not taste good, they are not good to eat, not sweet and good to drink from laden boughs, from generous earth—saying, I can get better for my little money, for the shopkeeper will trade me chaff for apples, apples for chaff, and my chaff is good enough for me, chaff for a couple bloated old apples from a faraway land, from some farm, and what’s the difference? Cold, reliable exchange, cold and predictable, the same every time, for the choicest apples, good and uniform, the same every time, never an odd taste, never a harsh bitter flavor.
Things don’t taste so good when you’re the one holding bitterness. There is so much bitterness in people’s hearts, that if they taste the tiniest tinge of bitter then it’s too much, it’s the last wafer, overwhelm on overwhelm, and they spit it out! But with a calm heart, a heart fasted in the meadow, a heart that leaps for what is good and holy, a clear and pure heart, free of inner bitterness, then what is a little bitterness from a kind old apple tree, generous and good, not expensive, a gift, a kind old grandmother’s apple tree, a kind old grandfather’s love, sung into living with good voices, by a hundred people and a thousand deities and ten thousand thanks and a hundred thousand excellent apples and a million excellent apple seeds, a few of which may sprout, may live, may grow up, spring up, unfurl, sprawl and blossom forth—a hundred thousand apples that fill the belly, that nourish one well with excellent food, that cause one to leap up, to live and be alive, that cause one to be joyous and hale? Or, if still the one apple tree makes your tongue curl, then walk on, walk along with a big basket, with a great vessel and a heart that has drank goodness, that has drank deeply from the nectar of immortals, from the sun upon the earth—yea, walk along and seek amidst the trees another one drinking that very nectar, a wonderful tree generously bearing, another one bringing gifts up from the Mother, up from the Excellent One!
There is a tree by the library, called the Laughing Tree because when two or three people have been picking fruit together under their boughs, they begin laughing. The apples are tiny, like little blueberries, and soft as the black earth in the mountains, with a couple of small seeds in each, and the taste is like the light and the fire of the rising sun and the chirping of the clear flowing Mettowee, the good water, the blossom-water full of fish, beaver-water, muskrat-water clear and deep, whose hair is the willows and the reed-canary. Would you know that these fruits, these excellent gifts of this lovely tree, were apples, if you passed by—would you drink the fruit from the boughs, accept a gift well given, give again? One day these tiny apples sustained me the whole day—they are wholesome and full, red-purple and good to digest, good to drink from the tree, good to stuff oneself of good kindly branches, good joyous boughs. It wasn’t long ago that this wonderful deity was planted in good earth, above grey stone. And if you let the gift from your body mix with the leaves and grasses, let it become the earth, let good seed from good earth leap up, spring up, spring forth, slowly and then quickly unfurl and blossom forth, then may many hedgerows and many meads be graced with many wonderful deities, children of this first one, this generous one, blessed, graceful to look upon, towering kindly, sprawling with benevolence, with great kindness, joyful! Or to take a handful of seeds and put them in a prepared place—that too.
To be a gift is the ordinary way of things—this much you can see! To be a gift like clear water flowing, to be a gift like the willows by the water, like the Laughing Tree, branches bent down with sweet red fruit, sweet purple fruit. What would you rather, which makes your heart grow full, makes your heart live, O divine one, divine Human Being, Heart Being upon good earth, upon grey stone?—to be alone, looking for ever more pennies, ever further, your eyes strange and distant and hungry like a gaping chasm, scratching at the earth for pennies, stealing from the earth, stealing from your sister and stealing from your brother? Or to look up, look well, look giving up, renouncing what is not good, look giving thanks, taking up what is good, look up at the heavens so vast, so great, and the land sprawling, the high mountains towering, and before you a wondrous deity stands, wondrous bearer of the gifts of the earth, an apple tree, an apple prayed and sang by the ancestors into this beloved form upon this beloved earth, into this black meadow shining brightly, fruitfully bearing? And, sowing good seeds in good earth, caring for the earth, tending the earth to be deep and black and whole again, to again be filled with the white fungus root, to be filled with the generous roots of the apple tree, of the plum and currant and the towering oak and the all-good fruiting trees, of the parsnip and all the good meadow-roots, good meadow-fruits, generous beings, praying that they be, that they should again spring up, again be here, and drop for the children, hang low for the grandchildren, sweet, full of sweet water, good Mettowee-water, these our excellent sisters, brothers beloved upon good earth, upon grey stone? And, giving thanks, weeping a thousand tears of thanks again, to eat what is good, to eat of what is freely given, given to be given once again, by the children of the Earth, from the Earth, again, and to and from the Earth, Mother of All, Beloved Earth, Excellent One, Most Splendid Abundant One, Merciful One, Black Earth, Fungus Earth, Dame’s Rocket Earth, Garlic Mustard Earth, Goldenrod Blossoming Earth, Wild Ginger Earth, Yellow Lily Unfurling Earth, Hemlock Earth, Pine Earth, Maple Earth, Spruce Earth and Fir Earth, Locust Earth and Ash Earth, Bright Black Mountain Earth and Beloved Abundant Valley Earth—Most Wondrous Earth, beloved of all!—so long as the sun shines and the seasons turn, so long as water flows and the mountains stand tall and the valleys fill with hemlocks sparkling in the good autumn air, in the glimmering sun in the springtime, in these mountain lands, gathering and sowing, sowing and gathering, again and again, here, here in these mountain lands, may we give thanks.