Remembering the Old Apple Tree

The place I grew up in, the street where I lived, had, at one time been part of the vast Victorian-era estates owned by American industrialist Russell Sage and his family, as well as a few other wealthy folks. The main mansion was located across the highway from our street, but other houses and mansions and farms existed on our side, as well.

By my time (1960-83), the carrige house was converted to a rental house, the hen house was a shed. The one mansion mostly housed the Episcopal bishops of Albany, NY--until the early 80's. The original house burnt down, and a more modern structure re-built. The old cowbarn/polo pony stables/feed store/groom's quarters still remained...a green and white barn complex...closely pattened on the barns at the world famous Saratoga Race Course. It smelled deeply of must and mold and the rotting native pine of which it was made.

There were the Japanese gardens, right behind our house---moss covered paths, flowers and flowering bushes, and evergreens..designed to be green all year 'round, with a big silver bowl that at one time (before it was stolen) had a cherub leaning on a fish that spit water from its mouth. There was the teahouse..torn down in the late 70's after some stupid teens vandalized it. Basically, it was a rustic brown screen house with indoor BBQ pits and a heavy-duty corrigated green plastic-like roof. I used to sit under the overhang on rainy days, gazing arcross the nearby ravene up at the grove of northern white pines on the little hill opposite. I used to sit there, reading or writing poetry, or trying (unsuccessfully, sadly) to learn the guitar, or just sit, and listen to the rain drumming on the roof, and the squak of the bluejays and smell the musty wood of the building and the tang of wet pine and the deep fragrance of the earth.

The little ravene that ran in front of the gardens, ran alongside our house. Across from the ravene and our house, was an old pasture with a few apple trees. Reckon the trees must've been all of at least 50 years old by my time. Black rot crawling up their trunks--the apples used to fall to the ground, then get ripe...but they were delicious apples, nonetheless.

I used to sit in the lower branches of the tree and daydream. About horses, or meeting my favourite celebrity of the moment, of writing a great book, of...oh, all sorts of things, I imagine. Sometimes, though...I just absorbed. I sat and listened and watched and smelled...and felt. I let the landscape become a part of me, in that old apple tree, as I became part of the landscape. We merged together until the creaking of the branches seemed to be so natural to me, like my own breath. Allowing the tree, the wind, the sky and sun to mingle inside my soul, to merge into a feeling that words cannot capture sufficently. It was a spirtual experience..a feeling of serenity, or peace and harmony..of being in the very centre of the universe and joining with the life around you.

There's some that say, sitting in an old apple tree for long periods must be rather boring...but how can one be bored, when one has the universe? Because, to me, nature is the universe...a microcosom of it. All the sounds and smells and sights and feelings all mingle..each is like a thread in a huge and complex tapestry..the tapestry being the universe. The apple tree is just one small thread out of billions and billions...but all you need is to touch that thread..and you've touched the universe.