Fall finally seems to have arrived here in Seattle. The weather has acquired that crispness that makes this one of my favorite times of the year. This is the traditional time of harvest – pumpkins and Halloween are here, and then we slide into November and Thanksgiving with it’s pause for reflection and thankfulness, and it’s own wonderful culinary harvests of the season. Fall has already yielded two wonderful, unexpected, profound and simple moments for me.
The first, my recent trip to Portugal and Spain, was understandably exciting and enjoyable. But in the rugged wine country of Northern Portugal in the middle of their hectic wine harvest, I was struck by people who are both gracious and humble, and have an indescribable passion for the land and its fruits. I walked with a winemaker through the rock-filled vineyard and listened to him speak passionately about his vines, until he stopped at his vegetable garden, cut a ripe red pepper from the vine, carefully sliced it with his pocket knife and offered me a taste of this harvest – the literal fruits of his labor. I doubt I will ever taste a red pepper like that again.
The second, and perhaps most joyous event was an email I received from Philadelphia. While I was in college, I had the privilege and honor (for indeed it was both), to be matched as a bone marrow donor for a young anonymous girl with leukemia. The transplant was a wonderful success and she went into permanent remission. She has since finished college, and I was thrilled to receive an invitation to her wedding, scheduled for November – a wedding that has now (and happily) been postponed due to the arrival of Caleb, the child she was told she would never be able to have.
“May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan.”
With an abundance of things to be thankful for, here is November’s Poem of the Month.
Robert Frost
(1874-1963)
Unharvested
A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.
May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.
