In
Love of Walnuts:
I
was once young, an eight-year old, and by any explanation that was some time
ago, in this case embarrassingly close to sixty-five years. This time span is
not child’s play and for reasons, not totally apparent, I can’t account for the
speed which has consumed that span. Fortunately, there is still a certain
lucidity in my mind so that it is possible to recall some things from that
time, not only recall them but, most interestingly, to have sensations and
vivid memories pertaining to smell. The sensation, I suspect, is only part of
it because with the odor of certain items or situations comes images that,
while somewhat ethereal, are still, to this old mind meaningful and rich.
We returned here to our home ground 12 years ago. That
first fall on our return to Wisconsin, and really, every year since, we have
almost without effort, managed to round up at least some walnuts. Initially, I recall
simply finding one in glorious repose under a tree. It was unmolested by the
resident squirrels as it sat their half buried in the duff like a lost golf
ball. Almost instinctually, I lifted the light green orb to my nose. I knew
hidden there was a crisp pungent odor of the earth. I knew there were memories,
maybe ones lost from living in the west all those years. Like every person,
there are childhood experiences associated with distant odors, be it faint hint
of a mother’s perfume, or secret smell associated with Port Orford Cedar, the
wood used to make our own arrows or the smell of fall as the western Chamisa
and sunflowers bloomed on the August prairie of Colorado.
In this case,
it was the Black Walnut. Like flying birds rattling through my brain, I was taken
back in Sauk County there on the Wisconsin River. In the distant haze of magical
memory, I recalled, almost seeing our band of foragers flopping from the car in
disarray, gunny bag in hand, heading for some known Walnut tree where waited
the green nuts ready for grabbing.
In early October, we would get packed in the old ’36 Chevrolet,
in a fashion probably not much different than the family dog, who in glee would
hang from the window, jowls flopping in the breeze with spittle running wild,
and head for the Baraboo Hills. While we
two kids might have been slugging it out in the back just out of the reach of
the old man, I would not be surprised if we two ratty-assed kids were also face
to the wind, head out the window yelling and drooling. It was adventure time.
Duward’s Glenn rings a bell as does Parfrey’s Glenn and
from there our disheveled troupe would scrounge around looking for all sorts of
things including walnuts---but I still recall distant stories of watching for Timber Rattlers—and hearing
the old man excitedly carry on about how he almost put his hand on one---to
that we paid attention.
The trip was a family thing and a chance to touch and
smell all things wild. I didn’t know then my father was born in New York and
raised in Chicago, so in looking back I’m not sure how he managed to become so
engaged in this country life. Maybe it was the quiet presence of my mother who
had been raised in a more rural setting in northern Illinois. What is now very clear
is they had a genuine love for the countryside, the uninhabited, the quiet
settings of the forest and fields.
I know at the age of maybe eight, I was already fascinated
by the newts, frogs, butterflies and wild growing food my parents were showing
us. The smell of the walnut was impossible to miss. Just the slightest scratch
of the hull and from it came this rich, earthy odor only found in that one
species.
I don’t doubt, knowing our families later history,
that it was there we learned to throw things at each other---like fat walnuts.
It wouldn’t even surprise me if the my father started it. Later in life there
were many childish, rowdy fights with acorns, walnut and apples accompanied by
pock-mark wounds, and a few tears all of which that were met with little
sympathy. It was the old man, I’m sure.
So therein lies the memory that still drifts around in
my head. Scratch the newly fallen walnut and there in front of me is a soft
spot, a vision of a family picnic and a sack of walnuts---maybe the burn of
being hit by a 65 mph fast (ball) nut from my lousy brother. It is all just
good.
Of course, this is not the only wafting odor that sets
off the winds of memory, but it is a pleasant one, and one I could wish on any
one.
In the last few years I have taken it farther than
just momentarily dwelling on the gift of smell but also harvesting local
walnuts, hulling them, slowly picking the meats out and then in the great glee
of an easily impressed child, introducing them into pancakes and cookies. When
the first cookies were made, I noticed the taste of the nuts also rang one of
those tiny bells in my brain, not the ones damaged by a few too many
concussions, but silver bells of a warm kitchen and still-steaming cookies.
The walnut holds a dear place in my life and due to their
abundance around here, we are now able to enjoy every aspect of them almost
every year---and that is, without throwing them at aging, still-mouthy
brothers---not that we wouldn’t try.
