Wild apples

November 11.

Now is the time for wild apples.

I pluck them as a wild fruit native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead. From the appearance of the tree you would expect nothing but lichens to drop from it, but underneath your faith is rewarded by finding the ground strewn with spirited fruit. Frequented only by the woodpecker, deserted now by the farmer, who has not faith enough to look under the boughs.

Food for walkers.

Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat, - apple of the evening sky, of the Hesperides.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1850

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”


Now is the time for wild apples. . . Food for walkers. See November 11, 1853 ("Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.") See also September 21, 1852 ("It is an agreeable surprise to find in the midst of a swamp so large and edible a fruit as an apple."); September 24, 1851 (" I notice wild apples growing luxuriantly in the midst of the swamp, rising red over the colored, painted leaves of the sumach, and reminding me that they were ripened and colored by the same influences, some green, some yellow, some red, like the leaves"); October 3, 1859 ("Wild apples are perhaps at their height, or perhaps only the earlier ones");  October 27, 1855 (“I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.“); October 27, 1855 (“To appreciate their wild and sharp flavors, it seems necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is all aglow with exercise, the frosty weather nips your fingers (in November), the wind rattles the bare boughs and rustles the leaves, and the jay is heard screaming around. Some of those apples might be labelled, “To be eaten in the wind.”); October 31, 1851 ("The wild apples are now getting palatable. . . . The saunterer's apple not even the saunterer can eat in the house."); November 2, 1857 ("Wild apples have lost some of their brilliancy now and are chiefly fallen.")

 

The winter is approaching.

The birds are almost all gone.

The note of the dee de de 

sounds now more distinct,

prophetic of winter,

 as I go amid the wild apples.

November 4, 1855 ("It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.“); November 7, 1858 ("My apple harvest! It is to glean after the husbandman and the cows, or to gather the crop of those wild trees far away on the edges of swamps which have escaped their notice. . . . I fill my pockets on each side, and as I retrace my steps, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, in order to preserve my balance."); November 22, 1860 ("Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.Though your hands are numb with cold, your sense of enjoyment is not benumbed. You cannot now find an apple but it is sweet to taste."); November 23, 1850 ("The wild apples, though they are more mellow and edible, have for some time lost their beauty, as well as the leaves, and now too they are beginning to freeze. The apple season is well-nigh over. Such, however, as are frozen while sound are not unpleasant to eat when the spring sun thaws them"); December 11, 1855 (" I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls."); December 18, 1859 ("Apples are thawed now and are very good. Their juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know. They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press."); December 19, 1850 ('The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")