It has been one of those weeks; every line on every day in the calendar book full. This weekend the weather was sunny and dry and we decided to skip digging potatoes and hike heading to one of our favorite fall foliage areas in the Champlain Valley.
Leaf litter crunches as a light breeze pulls stragglers from the trees: the October sunshine negating the necessity for a coat. As we head into the underbrush we notice that the wet conditions this summer have slowed down normal foot traffic making the path narrow and tangled with Goldenrod and purple Astors. If we hadn’t been here so many times it would have seemed we were breaking trail. The only hikers alongside us are mosquitoes.
Rokeby Museum was founded in memory of Rowland Evans Robinson who was born and died here. His family came to this property in 1793, just two years after Vermont became a state. For more than 150 years this family of Quakers lived here as farmers, writers, artists, naturalists and social reformers. Amazingly several buildings, including their home, remain in tact. The hiking trails lead us out the same paths that took sheep and cattle from their barns to pasture to graze, through carefully cultivated orchards that grew fruit and nuts and fields that grew grain.
As views of the homestead disappear, we walk quietly. Muir and Bronte race ahead of us, seemingly to make sure to take it all in before being called back to leash. We step off the trail and stand at the edge of a large open field that once grazed hundreds of Merino sheep. Tucked low in the field, hay bales sit waiting for their pick-up, the field no longer feeding Merinos but still in service to farm animals.
In the early 1800s homesteading was not a life style- it was a necessity. What people needed, they grew. The fields supported livestock used for selling and eating. Farmers planted fields of grains and acres of fruit and nut trees. Everything smoked, canned and root-cellared, and put up for the long winter months. As we walk we stumble over curious green orbs that look very much like tennis balls. We look up to see what tree they are falling from. I put one under my foot, stomp and open up its center which reveals a perfect walnut. There are walnuts everywhere. I think about how many people have knelt to collect bags of walnuts to be dried and stored for cracking on Thanksgiving.
Moving on I notice thousands of smaller, moist, dark shells. I pick up one that has broken open and find a hazelnut peeking out. They are everywhere. Paul and I have never seen a Hazelnut tree and as we scan above us we identify where the nuts are being dropped from. Enormous trees with ragged bark towering over us and tossing us free Hazelnuts.
It is apparent that we are walking through the grove of nut trees and its predecessors that have sprung from the original trees planted by the Robinsons. The forest is reclaiming the orchards but, like the Robinsons themselves, it seems these trees are not quite ready to disappear. It is as if hazelnuts and walnuts drop on our heads as a ghostly reminder of those walking before us.
There is an algea-green pond that Muir takes delight in crashing into, scattering frogs bathing in the warm afternoon sunshine. We step carefully through the muddy path around it and continue. I come upon what look like more walnuts so I, once again, step down hard on one to delight in finding the prize in the center, only this time my foot goes right down through it. I pick it up and notice there are small seeds inside. I lift it to my nose and then take a small bite. Pears. Small, imperfectly shaped, but pears. Each step crushes the rotting fruit sending up an almost sickly sweet aroma. Paul and I wish we had brought a bag as we scout out some of the cleanest fruit. We decide to bring home as many as we can stuff into our pockets. We’ll use them in morning smoothies alongside raspberries that we grow. We walk forward, bulging.
We don’t go far before seeing large apples fallen onto the path. I had read that the Robinson’s had an extensive fruit orchard and I find a thin, scraggly apple tree where apples dangle precariously in the breeze. We take big bites out of one and discover a light pink center with a sweet, not tart, flavor. Later I find information about the seventy-six varieties of apples planted in 1849. Heirloom apples with beautiful names like: Bellflower, Espopus Spitzenburgh and the one I think we ate, Maiden’s Blush. The wind picks up a bit and we feel like there are others with us, wanting to show us their farm. There is magic in the breeze.
I toss the rest of the apple into the woods, hoping that the seeds in the heart of it will find a way to plant the next generation for someone new to find.
The trail ends at a very small pond with curled leaves sailing across. Bronte and Muir take deep drinks and then launch into the center. Paul and I sit on a fallen tree and watch leaves fall.
Heading back I notice my hands stained by the walnuts of a farm from the past as well as purple from antiseptic I used on my own sheep on my farm this morning.