Five apples. That’s all I could count as I circled the tree, tucked away out of sight just off the trail in this woodland beyond the city’s edge. Low brush scratched my legs as I stumbled beneath the branches, my gaze upward. The apples were rather large, their species unknown to me. Now there’s only three.
I knew this tree was here, having taken photos last winter of its neglected apples, too high for deer to reach, brown and frozen apples wearing caps of new snow. Now in the heart of apple season there was only a handful of apples on the old scraggly tree, probably past its life’s prime of production.
I first saw this tree years ago while running through the woodland. The autumn discovery of an apple tree far away from buildings and roads always stirs my imagination. The red jewels of September are right there in front of me, but the tree’s history is not as easy to see.
Was I standing where a farmstead once thrived a century or more ago? Was the apple tree in the backyard, or perhaps in the woodlot just beyond where I found what looked like the remannts of a building’s foundation? If I poke further off the trail, will I find more signs of a farm’s crumbled past?
I imagine the tree was once harvested by someone who lived here or nearby. Harvested on pretty autumn days, the promise of apple pie in the pickers’ hands. Did the farmers come here with gunny sacks, or was an apron simply folded up for a makeshift bag?
Now the tree bears fruit with no idea for whom. Perhaps deer and bear, and birds, along with the occasional woodland hiker who passes by. I couldn’t resist. The two largest and most red of the five apples were within arm’s reach. I snapped one off the twig, and the other tumbled to the ground. One for me, one for the deer.
I imagined the deer finding the treat later that day, like a child discovering a shiny penny on the sidewalk. I walked away, clutching my red prize in my hand, having added another small piece in the history of an old apple tree gently living out its life in near obscurity.