Orchard Ruminants

Thoreau said that you must walk like a camel because it is said to be the only beast that ruminates while it walks. He got me pondering about this word ruminate. Chewing the cud is ruminating and pondering is also ruminating.

Ruminants are animals with multiple stomachs and the largest and first stomach is called the rumen. Cows, for example, have four stomachs. Grazing they fill their first one, the rumen, with barely chewed grass. Then they find a comfortable place to rest. From the rumen they bring back up this grass and chew and chew. They ruminate, they ponder, maybe even ask, “Who am I?” What is Cow?” The progressively smaller bits of grass when swallowed pass into the second stomach and then flow into the other two stomachs. Sharp thorns, crab grass — everything is broken down and all the nutrients are taken up. In this way cows and other ruminants eat plant materials that are indigestible by humans and animals with simple stomachs.

Sitting with Ox, wax: Sculpture, LH

Thoreau knew that camels are the only ruminants that walk when they ruminate. [1] I guess all the other ones sit on their duff.  He chose the camel to chide us for sitting in libraries with our heads in books (or iPads) and not spending enough time outdoors. When he talked about walking and ruminating he meant that we should make the fields and woods our place to see and learn: we should be like the camel, walk and ruminate, be more present as we stride through this world.

Thoreau’s chiding got to me and I pulled myself out of my comfortable chair (away from my laptop), strapped my saw to my belt and grabbed loppers to begin pruning in the orchard. It was Ground Hog Day, an unseasonably warm day. Punxsutawney Phil (the ground hog in Pennsylvania) did not see his shadow, which meant that warm days were ahead. I tasted spring. It was like the instructions an enthusiastic French winemaker once told me for drinking a good wine, “Il faut le macher.” (You have to chew it.) I chewed spring, pondered over pruning decisions, and could even ruminate on the indigestible after a few hours among the trees.  

Only three days later heavy snow fell. Punxsutawney Phil might make better predictions with a little more rumination, but I didn’t care. The snow was beautiful and because we prune apple trees every year they have strong limbs. A camel can carry two hundred pounds, but an apple tree easily holds this weight in fruit, or in snow. There is strength in walking as well as standing. 

An apple tree doesn’t have one stomach or four stomachs, but you could consider the entire tree one great rumen. Sunlight, water, and minerals from the soil are turned into into complex carbohydrates, amino acids, and proteins. Not only do these trees grow healthy fruit, but they build organic soil and sequester carbon. Today Thoreau might say, we must stand still, grow deep roots: we must be more like the trees.

1. Technically camels are pseudo ruminants because they have three not four stomachs.

The Fallen Tree

My neighbor, Ed, offered to help me right a fallen apple tree. This tree is large, one of the beauties in the orchard, and three months ago it fell over – onto its knees you might say.  The crop of fruit was so heavy it couldn’t support the weight. Leaning heavily to one side now, resting on some smaller limbs it waits. I know the roots must have been shattered, at least some of them, and it needs to be supported or it will fall over completely. But Ed thinks we should lift it back as upright as possible. I worry that we’ll do more damage. 

It’s this question that I am always encountering in the orchard.  How much do I control? How much in control am I?  I tell my neighbor that I hear what he is saying.  But I also know that this tree in the three months since it has fallen has done everything in its power to survive. Because nature wants to live. We all want to live. And it’s as much a question of spirit as it is about physical properties. 

Rudolph Steiner, the German philosopher, said that plants are intermediaries between the celestial bodies and the earth. This tree is alive. It connects the jays and the squirrels who bicker among the old, hanging fruit.  It connects my neighbor and me. We want to save it.

Two days later we meet. I have two wood two-by-fours for the tree’s support and we head to my shop to find bolts and nuts to put them together in an X shape. The fastener department in my shop is a medley of assorted screws, bolts, and other rusty paraphernalia. Ed picks up one bent bolt and says smiling, “Linda, you don’t really want to save this, do you?” Its curve echoes the crescent moon.  I see his point but I say, “I wanna keep it.” I keep most things, especially when they are worn, threadbare, or rusty. He puts it back in the drawer with the other straight ones. Then we take our doubled up two-by-fours, ropes, chains, a piece of rug to put between the support and the tree, chainsaw, and loppers.

He drives his tractor and I drive mine.  We position ourselves in adjacent rows on either side of the tree and string the ropes.  We put our tractors in four-wheel drive lo-gear so the pull will be slow and gentle.  I can’t hear Ed over the noise of the engines but see him nod, ‘ok’.  We both start backing up and the ropes and chains from the trunk to each of our tractors tighten and stretch. Ever so slowly, this huge towering beast starts to awaken from its slumber. There are no bumps or hesitations; the tree lifts up, a silent resurrection.

We stop pulling, keep the tractors running, and climb down to assess.  The tree is still leaning and Ed feels we should take it farther. The rising has been so easy and I don’t feel that we are further stressing the tree so I agree. We pull a little more and then decide it is enough. We install the support. Ed’s rope to his tractor is loose, but my tractor is still tethering the tree. Now is the test. As I drive forward and release the pressure will the tree support itself? I am anticipating that with the release there will be a settling back, but as I inch forward there isn’t the slightest movement of the tree.  It is magnificent standing there on its own with arching lower limbs.  Fruit still clings to its branches like holiday ornaments. 

I think about the moments when I am ‘bent out of shape’, when I am annoyed or frustrated, when there are things I would rather be doing than what I need to do. To what or to whom do I turn to lift me out of this bent state?  The meticulous attention required to right that tree and the act of working with my neighbor restored something in me. I remembered the bent nail in my studio fastener department. I decided to give it to Ed.