These images were taken yesterday, when curiosity made us follow an old deer path that was new to us. We ducked and weaved through brambles and bittersweet-strewn shrubs and trees. Then, we suddenly were under the lichen-laced limbs of several “wild” (long-abandoned) apple trees that must have been more than 100 years old.
Many of the apples were nearly perfect and most were still tightly-screwed onto their gnarled branches. There were ground signs of deer and raccoon or coyote. This almost inaccessible apple tree temple is on posted (no hunting) land, which contributed to a sense that we were standing where no human had stood in many decades.
We wrested an apple away from its mother tree and took a bite. Maybe it was the solitary time and place and the chilly, woods-scented air, but that apple’s extraordinary deliciousness evoked childhood imaginings of Adam confronting irresistibility in paradise. See also the image in the first Comment space. (Brooklin, Maine)