ALL IN GOOD TIME

Apples are very popular, but in our everyday lives we rarely encounter more than a handful of varieties. Only eleven varieties produce 90 per cent of all apples sold in chain grocery stores. Image credit: *ZEN CHUNG* on Pexels.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

As a child growing up in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit, especially apples.

She watched her father graft or prune peach, plum or jackfruit trees. Her mother turned the fruit into jams that were legendary among those she shared them with.

When the family moved to the US, those biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard-tasting apples that lined supermarket shelves. Then as a naturalist living in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree growing in a small patch of woods near her home – and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway back into the wild?

In The Light Between Apple Trees, Kumar paints on a wide canvas, considering not only apple trees but also the ecosystems that support old-growth trees and wild animals.

With gorgeous prose, she brilliantly weaves together riveting science and childhood memories into the apple’s storied history, from its roots in Kazakhstan to Spanish orchards in the Southwest, to the Midwest’s legendary James Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed), and all points in between. Writing about Thomas Jefferson’s love for apples, Kumar doesn’t shy away from the complicated history of his employing slaves though he opposed slavery in theory.

She shares with readers the delicious fact that First Lady Abigail Adams thought of her garden as having a mind.

She traces the history of apples – they were present in Mesopotamia in 323 BCE – and reveals that the apple was domesticated from the wild European crabapple.

Spanish, French, and English settlers all contributed to an impressive biodiversity in apples, and by intertwining the history of apples with the growth of American society, Kumar provides a unique lens to understand the US’s cultural, ecological, and agricultural heritage.

She swings open a door to a hidden biodiverse world, bringing readers to the vibrant orchards and forests where historic trees still survive.

“Chasing the childhood memory was never about locating the Himalayan orchard that had enthralled my five-year-old self,” she writes. “I was searching instead for what the orchard had evoked in me.”

My own apple memories surface as I read the book.

My friend, neighbour and gardening guru Dorothy didn’t spray the apple and crabapple trees in her yard. “I can always pick some up at the grocery, the birds and insects can’t!”

And her yard was a haven for pollinators as they feasted on the fruits and flowers she grew.

Priyanka Kumar is the author of *Conversations with Birds*. She wrote, directed, and produced the feature documentary *The Song of the Little Road*, starring Martin Scorsese and Ravi Shankar.

By then, having read about all the toxins that were sprayed on commercially available fruits, I was scrubbing clean every fruit we purchased.

Years later, on a trip to Himachal Pradesh we found ourselves surrounded by orchards in the Himalayan foothills, the air perfumed with apples. Different varieties hung from the trees, draping them in a fruity mantle. And naively, I assumed these must be pesticide-free. After all, we were in Dev Bhoomi, or god’s country. I asked a man who was watching our excited chatter with mild amusement how they kept their harvests free of blight and pests, hoping to learn of natural ways of doing so.

“Poison, didi,” was his succinct response.

Kumar draws a scary parallel between fiction and fact.

In the fairy tale, Snow White almost chokes on a poisoned apple, and now our real-life apples are laced with toxic chemicals.

Among interesting facts you will find in The Light Between Apple Trees:

• Of the 16,000 named apple varieties once celebrated in America, less than a fifth remain accessible.

• Apples are very popular, but in our everyday lives we rarely encounter more than a handful of varieties. Only eleven varieties produce 90 per cent of all apples sold in chain grocery stores.

• Today, conventional American apples are sprayed routinely with diphenylamine, a toxic chemical that is banned in Europe.

• Apples and bananas continue to be the most consumed fresh fruit per capita by Americans, though they consume fewer apples now than they once did – around fifty a year, or less than one a week. “After a barrage of insipid and oversweet apples, it is perhaps understandable that our apple love has dried up,” posits Kumar. And adds that the banana, too, is losing varieties. “A single variety, the Cavendish, named after an English duke, accounts for half of the world’s banana production and 99 per cent of all exports.”

• Apples sweeten after a frost.

Nearly everyone is living under the daily weight of toxic fear, anger, and anxiety imposed upon us by the unrelenting news cycle. And despite all of the bad news about biodiversity loss, climate change, and other ecological threats, The Light Between Apple Trees offers hope and serves as an antidote to everything that is chaotic and poisonous these days. We all need a reset and Kumar offers that as she shows ways to connect to joy through nature. “Especially now, nature is our best ally – always present. But the key is that we, too, have to be present in our relationship with nature! When we learn how to be in nature, our mood, health, intellect, and life are all uplifted.”

Kumar richly illustrates how apple trees face climate-change driven droughts, biodiversity loss, and the mindless destruction of pockets of wild land. Amidst all this loss, she asks the visionary question: Is it worthwhile to save scraps of ecosystems? The answer – a resounding yes. In gardens and orchards across America, Kumar introduces readers to the transformative power of the micro-wild and how we can truly reconnect with nature.

“Swamped by industrial habitats, it is challenging to see the silent parade of one million species facing extinction,” as she writes. Rewilding the land, our fruits, and our souls won’t be easy, but the seeds already exist: all we have to do is water them.

“No great thing is created suddenly; any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig,” Epictetus wrote. “If you tell me, that you desire a fig, I answer you, that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”

As Kumar dreams of growing apples and apricots that once thrived in her region so her children and others will know them, I picture the littlest member of our family running between rows of apple trees when we go apple picking one day soon.

It’s a happy picture.

Priyanka Kumar is the author of Conversations with Birds. She wrote, directed, and produced the feature documentary The Song of the Little Road, starring Martin Scorsese and Ravi Shankar.

A ROOM WITH A POINT OF VIEW

ALL IN GOOD TIME