Mornings in the Orchard

The Apple Harvest 

Although sunrise is supposed to be about 6:30 am today, it's already 7:15 when it fully crests the mountain ridges to the east, making me raise my hand to cover my eyes. It's golden hour in the golden delicious orchard and the sun's first rays are hitting the apples, giving them their namesake glow. The 100-year old family orchard rises steeply above the eastern shore of Lake Chelan in the heart of Washington's - and the country's - apple capital. It overlooks a patchwork of other orchards spread across the low hills below, not only apple but also pear and cherry, and an increasing number of small vineyards. The sunrise also adds a rosy tint to the vertical ridge to the west, rising abruptly thousands of feet in elevation from the fjord-like lake. Sprouts of irrepressibly cheery miniature sunflowers dot the edges of the road and I can't help but smile seeing their pollen-freckled faces. 

It's mid-September and the apple harvest has just begun. Two pickers are already at work among the golden delicious trees. On ladders, they reach into the branches, smoothly and quickly selecting and hand-twisting each apple off its stem and placing them in shoulder-slung cloth bags. As their bags fill, the harvesters descend their ladders and walk the orchard row to the large, wooden bins. With the same care as a fisherman releasing a trout back into a stream, they tenderly pour the picked apples into the bins. The golden delicious variety can be delicate, bruising more easily than others, and they know well that bruised fruit won't sell, so gentle handling is tantamount. 

At this hour the morning is still, but not silent. Twittering around me are small flocks of birds moving in groups from tree to tree. They aren't interested in the apples, fortunately, but congregate in the native pines surrounding the orchard. I hear warblers, nut hatches, towhees, and am delighted by a bevy of quail, their little topknots bobbing as they skitter in a line across the soft dirt road. Overhead, a norther flicker drums on the metal cap of an electric pole in a call-and-response with the drumming of an adversary we can hear, but not see nearby. Drifting up from the valley floor, the breeze carries strains of a Latin music radio station and I hear voices in a different rhythm than English, doubtless it's Spanish. Other workers busy in the rows of other orchards. Everyone works at harvest time and gone are days off until the picking is done. A passenger boat motors up the 53-mile long lake, its engine humming in the distance.  

I expected to smell the apples, as prolific as they are, but instead it's late-summer dry grass and sage wet with dew, dust kicked up by the occasional passing tractor, and this morning after the wind changed direction - the smell of smoke from an uncontained wildfire miles away. Later in the day, as the full sun heats up the piles of fallen or damaged apples, their scent will sweeten the breeze.  

Activity but stillness. 

Noise among tranquility.

Real life, not ridiculous life. 

An apple orchard a day...