“I try one of the wild apples in my desk. It is remarkable that the wild apples which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields and woods, when brought into the house have a harsh and crabbed taste.” Journal 10/27/1855
Wild Apples Out There
Today, we drive south, board a bus, wait some, then board a plane, sit some, sit some more, doze (we hope) through compressed night, rise and deplane, find a taxi, emerge at the steps of an apartment far from our home in Maine. That catalogue of travel doesn’t read as attractive, but this is a long planned for and sought trip, a month of residence in another place, and its point is similar, I think, to Thoreau’s in his journal entry above. If we will taste the spirit and raciness of a place, we must be there. Trying to import that place to Maine won’t work.
Or put a little differently: when we import much of our lives, we don’t live them in place. But when we go to a place, we can go there to live, to eat its “wild apples” in place.
So, while our month ahead isn’t in Thoreau country, the spirit of our approach to the city and streets of Paris is born of his sense of walking and being fully in place. We will look for apples (and chestnuts) along the streets.