Tantalizing Fruit

Tantalus was a rotten apple! An invited guest on Mt Olympus, he stole nectar and ambrosia and brought it back to impress his friends. But that wasn’t the worst. Later when the gods came to dine with him, he cut up his own son, Pelops, boiled him, and served him to his guests. The gods suspected something was off with the menu and declined to partake; but poor Demeter, distracted by the loss of her daughter, Persephone, took a bit of shoulder.

Zeus ordered that the parts of Pelops be collected and that he be put back together. Hephaestus made him an ivory shoulder, and he grew into a handsome youth, married, and had children of his own. Zeus killed Tantalus and then punished him further by making him stand waist-deep in water while overhead he was shaded by a large apple tree ripe with fruit. However, whenever Tantalus went to drink the water, it dried up; and each time he tried to pluck an apple, the wind blew the branch out of reach. He was trapped inside perpetual desire.

Orchardists desire a beautiful, abundant crop. They worry about the crop all year long. There’s no off-season. Weather can freeze the buds or the blossoms. Even the almost ripe fruit can be the unlucky destination for thirty seconds of hail. Then the apples will be pock-marked and susceptible to disease. Yet, still, growers of apples persevere. There’s something about growing fruit that challenges the soul. And the best part is that it requires hands-on attention.

How surprised I was to learn of a robotized apple picker being developed by Abundant Robotics, Inc. The picker will be drawn by a tractor with nozzles reaching out, up, and down, vacuuming the fruit off the tree. Each step of progress seems to take humans away from touching what we do, touching what we grow, automatizing our lives. Touch is a profound human experience. Think of an infant and how these two senses, touch and taste, are the foundation of her first relationships.

When I first saw the advertisement for this small farm in Harvard, MA, it said five bedrooms, a detached garage/barn, apple orchard, and a chicken coop. At that moment in my life, I was unsure about everything. I had never before contemplated owning a house, but I had to find a place to live. I wanted a place that would have rooms for my three children and a studio for making sculpture. I walked with a realtor through the kitchen where dark pine boards covered the walls and ceiling. There were no drawers or cabinets, only open shelves for plates, bowls, and glasses. Above a wood-burning cook stove hung a patchwork of blackened iron pans. This was a real work kitchen. We walked upstairs and I thought, If the house has hot water, everything will be fine. In the master bath, I turned on the hot water faucet in the 1960s avocado-colored sink. Warmth ran over my fingertips.

Maybe because I am a sculptor I trust what I feel with my hands. That touch of warmth gave me the confidence to move to the farm. But I had no idea that once I started to grow apples, I would become like Tantalus, desirous of plucking more and more fruit.

Women and Apples, Photo Credit: Carol J. Hicks

Even with extreme shifts of weather and unexpected environmental conditions, I persist. In winter, walking through the orchard, bending down the branches, pruning off what is no longer needed, and running my fingers over the frozen fruit buds, I fall again in love with the promise of fruit. And after a full day pruning in the winter cold, I sit in my favorite armchair and read the descriptions of heirloom and modern apples in my stack of saved nursery catalogues. I can’t help but be tantalized. I order a few new varieties for spring planting — a perfect Valentine's Day gift!

The Myths of History

I’ve been reading the book, Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. The author’s broad lens, an overview of our species from early man to the present time, is helpful as my focus has been so closely fixed on the daily headlines. Our brothers and sisters, members of our same genus, Homo, like Neanderthal man, Homo erectus, Homo soloensis, Homo floresiensis, among others, lived on this planet for millions of years. Then, Homo sapiens (Wise Man so we defined ourselves) evolved in West Africa, and spread throughout the Asian landmass, and all of the other members of our genus disappeared. Theories abound and no one really knows whether we were responsible. However, we do know a little about early sapien ways.

Ancient Turtle, Sculpture, LH

Homo sapiens, not content to stay in any one place, forged ahead. The first place we colonized was Australia, quite an undertaking considering the distance over land and water, but Homo sapiens did what we had been evolving to do. We stepped onto the landmass of what we call Australia where there were no other human beings, and changed it forever. Sapiens encountered great animals like 450 pound kangaroos, giant koala bears, and dragon size lizards. However, within a few short millennia, twenty-three of the twenty-four mammals weighing over one hundred pounds went extinct. Large animals have only one or two offspring and the gestation period is long. If the animal’s young are killed, even as few as one every month or so, in a few thousand years, they die out. As hunter and gatherers, we were not necessarily aware of the changes we were causing, but science points to the irreversible transformations we triggered.

Homo sapiens evolved extremely quickly. Unlike Homo erectus, for example, who used stone tools and remained essentially the same for two million years —  Homo sapiens wielded the hoe, the pen, and the brush, becoming farmers, and then, artists, politicians, scholars, scientists, and philosophers in a relatively short time. We developed a sophisticated language. Language, the big differential between us and other species, is how we shape our world. With language we decide collectively what to believe in, and how we envision the future. Harari makes the case that so much of our culture is myth anyway — it’s what we collectively believe. Sapiens became powerful because we learned how to collectively believe in myths—the myth of our economic system, the myth that there are countries with borders, the myths of religion. There is no scientific basis for any of these. From an historical perspective, you could say that religions developed and became dominant in a particular area for no more reason than a particular butterfly has blue wings. Perhaps we need to start dismantling some of our myths — especially the ones that separate instead of seek our commonality.

The assumption is that we have evolved from our wild and wooly ways, and developed and believe in sophisticated ideologies that we hold to be true and enable us to live peacefully and cooperatively with each other. But we don’t live peacefully or cooperatively with other sapiens or other creatures on the planet and we haven’t for many years. It’s almost as if our shadow side is finally coming forth and demanding to be seen and heard. It’s not this one election — nothing arises without a cause. On our planet millions of acres of forests are gone, our topsoil is disappearing at alarming rates, our biodiversity is shriveling, and climate change is going to make large areas inhabitable because of high water and high temperatures.  Greed, intolerance, and ignorance have all played their role.

This week I’ve been pruning the apple orchard with Denis Wagner who first taught me to prune the trees over a decade ago. We prune in silence until one of us asks about a certain branch. Sometimes we both stand back and gaze up into the crown of the tree wondering if there are some branches that need to be pruned out to encourage growth. We confer amiably and respectfully. We both know that there are multiple choices, and no one knows exactly what is best, but each cut changes the course of the growth of the tree. In the orchard it’s easy; we both want the best for the tree.

Does this analogy translate to the world? Not easily. Denis and I usually agree, and it takes very little for either of us to back down and harmonize with the other. But it does make me think that we need to talk, we need to stop building walls, stop filibustering, and stop being right. History has proved that unless we live compassionately and empathetically, we all suffer.

Apple Pressing, LH, 2016, Collection: Madeleine Lord

Hunters and gatherers related to their world with an early form of religion, what today we call animism. Animists believe that humans and animals can communicate — that we can and do have relationships not only with animals, but with trees, and even rocks. We share the world with these other creatures, both animate and inanimate. As we developed, we seemed to have forgotten that relationships are important. We have been focused on the power and the rights of the individual. Perhaps it’s time to throw out this notion of the sacrosanct individual, the one who signs executive orders at 4:42 pm on a Friday afternoon and changes the lives of thousands of people. But that means each of us, too, must loosen our own hold on our individual identity and join the fray – the messiness of living with all of our brothers and sisters, animate and inanimate, no matter what they do or do not believe in. 

Above all, we must enter the dialogue, speak up, loudly, and compassionately. We need to tell new stories that inspire and shed light on our earth, our home, our commonness. We are all Homo sapiens. We all have a beating heart.

Family Photo: My son, Alex, and his Dada, 1988

The Orchard in Winter

In 2006, when I was first learning about organic apple growing, I heard about a group of holistic apple growers who gather in western Massachusetts once a year for twenty-four hours of apple conversation. I signed up. Thirty men and two women besides myself, met at noon at Stumps Sprouts, a retreat center in Rowley, Massachusetts. We began with a vegetarian lunch. In the dining room an earthy energy emanated from the rugged men in Carharts, flannel shirts, and work boots. One thin man with a long grey beard had Felco pruners hanging on his belt, just in case something needed pruning. Up in the barn, to begin our first session, Michael Phillips, the organizer and author of The Holistic Orchard as well as the forthcoming, Mycorrhizal Planet, asked us to introduce our orchards. One of the men I met was Alan Suprenant who has a small orchard in Ashfield, Massachusetts. I asked Alan if he would be a guest blogger. 

The Orchard in Winter by Alan Suprenant

When we think of an orchard, we think about eating delicious fruit in the crisp, fall sunshine. We think of the wonderful fragrance of the trees in bloom, the gentle colors of the blossoms, the soft breeze that blows petals around our feet. But what of the orchard in winter, when trees seem to sleep, limbs akimbo against their bed of snow?

We can learn a lot from spending time with the orchard now, at this quiet time of year, observing what, on the surface, might at first seem unobservable. There’s a lot to learn about ourselves as well, there being many parallels between our lives and the lives of the trees.

Winter dormancy finds the orchard patiently waiting for a new year and the beginning of another growing cycle. This can be a time of patience and unfolding for us as well, as we anticipate and plan for what’s next in our lives and our lives with the trees. There’s little to do and much to be — loving, appreciative, optimistic, excited — as we wait for spring. How might we do this quietly, the way they do? Perhaps we just sit and watch them be still, as the light changes and the wind blows.

Trees in Winter, Photo: Alan Suprenant

Snow on the horizontal limbs of a well-pruned fruit tree allows us to clearly see the tree’s  bones, the structure that supports the weight of a good crop. The fruit buds have already formed last summer. They will absorb the sunlight and ripen the fruit to its utmost potential.

What does it mean for our lives to have good bones and a structure that supports us in bearing fruit? Good friends? Work we love? Self care? Balance in what we do? What feeds us in our lives, and how might we absorb it for our ripening?

A fruit tree should be pruned each year. Removing what isn’t needed helps ripen the fruit. Sometimes, looking down at a growing pile of discarded wood, it seems like I’m taking an awful lot away. But I’m paring down to what is essential for and about the tree, so it can become more of itself. It’s an art, this figuring out what to keep, and well worth it, because what grows now will be healthy, productive, and strong.

Pruning our own lives can be equally challenging, as we figure out, learning as we go  — what is essential about and for us. What might we discard that no longer serves us? An assumption? A belief? A story that limits us or people we know?  How might we prune our relationships so they grow stronger and yield the best that we and others have to offer? 

Some of the branches I cut in winter, scions, are saved for grafting onto rootstock in the spring. You make new trees this way, by gently inserting new wood into old, binding the two together until, fed by the soil and the sun, they become one. What parts of others might we take into ourselves to grow something new? And how will our new branching grow over the years? All this watching and waiting makes me better with the trees. I’m more able to understand the way they grow, what they need, how they respond to weather and light. I try something and then I pause — for a minute, a month, or a year — and see what happens, what the trees and my experience tell me. And it makes me better with my life as well. I’m more able to let things and people take their natural course. I can see more clearly what someone needs in order to feel safe or productive or loved.

Teaching people about my orchard gives me the opportunity to share not just the technical things — which limbs to take, what varieties to choose, how to hold the knife to make a good graft — but the essence of the orchard — a place of profound learning, quiet and, ultimately, delight. 

Winter Shadows, Photo:Linda Hoffman

The Hi-Line

“One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul.”

                        —Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves

It is Saturday morning as I write this blog in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. I am here with my partner, Blase, to visit my son, Nick who lives here. It feels like everyone else I know is either readying for walking in one of the Women’s Marches or despairing about the inauguration. Since arriving in Kona two days ago, the ocean swells have been several times normal. Driving along the rocky coast Nick can’t keep his eyes on the road as he is drawn to watch the surf breaking in high waves along beaches and inlets that are usually quiet. We stop often to watch and photograph.

As I write on a terrace where I can see the breaking waves and hear the chorus of forceful, soulful, singing; I hear the energy of Martin Luther King breaking into our collective longing with I Had a Dream. I think about what I can  do in the upcoming days, and weeks, and months with this new world order. I think about what we can each do to shine our light, to fan the embers and make them glow.

On our first day we drove to the southernmost tip of the Big Island, the southernmost point of the United States. The trees grow horizontal, their branches pulled as if by some invisible force, an unceasing tug of war between the fierce thrust of the constant wind and the need for the tree to remain rooted. it felt like an apt metaphor for the position so many of us feel we are in today.

Yesterday we drove the opposite direction, to Popolu in the north, a rough, ragged beach with boulders and rough seas, that sits at the end of a valley between two great ridges.

Nick led us down the steep trail, knowing at the bottom some of his friends were already there. They had strung a hi-line between trees in the woods behind the beach.  A hi-line is a slack rope, and theirs was set so that you had to walk over a ravine. We watched as one man, strapped with harness and clipped onto the line so he couldn't fall to the ground, began. Body erect, arms shifting side to side, torso adjusting with each minute waver of instability, countering, moving from instability to stability to instability, never a moment of settling into inactivity. He knew how to walk the distance, he’s been walking the hi-line for a while, but had always feared the line when there was a deep crevice to cross. It takes immense concentration to simply step up and balance on a slack rope. You never look down, you must breathe and relax, and fiercely keep your point of focus. I watched his intense physical and emotional single-minded attentiveness with awe.  He had to quiet the uproar of fear or he would fall.

A young woman was up next.  He reminded her, “We are here to challenge ourselves, to go where we most fear.”

What do I fear most? That is the question I will carry with me.  At each moment what am I fearing? Because if I am fearing, then I am not loving. And there are only these two possibilities. There are infinite ways to carry the light. It is up to each of us to be uniquely ourselves and bare our souls. There are no shoulds, no instruction set for how to step forward; we are each on our own unique hi-line. But some of the same guidelines apply — concentrate, relax, give in, forget the self, and go for it. And perhaps most importantly, never forget to focus on what matters most to your own soul, because that will be the truth and that will kindle the flame for others. 

Judith Taisei Schutzman at the Boston March