The orchard

Like a siren the orchard calls me this afternoon. The day is as crisp and clean as the first bite of a Granny Smith, and I need to be outside. I load boxes into the trunk and head north. This orchard is relatively small and family owned. On a weekday we have permission to simply arrive, park, and pick up any apples on the ground. The windfalls can’t be used for anything, so they are there to be gleaned. I find the owner sorting pumpkins and check in.

Then I see that road I usually take back beside the barn is blocked.

“It was muddy so we had a load of crushed ashphalt dumped,” she tells me in good Michiganese. Does anywhere else put an extra h in asphalt? We ponder how to get my car into the orchard since, unlike the tractor and wagon, I can’t just drive over the newly dumped piles. At her suggestion I take down one of the split rail fences, drive across the lawn, between massive pines, back around the cider press building, down between a row of apple trees and onto the road that leads across the hill and the orchard.

I drive to the back, knowing from experience that the trees in the back drop later than the trees in the front. Applesauce is best if made from a mix of apples, so I make no attempt to pick and choose specific breeds. My goal is to glean, fill boxes, and head home.

The seductive sunshine, the faint smell of fallen leaves mixed with apples, and memories slow me down. The siren has called again. In the distance I hear a highway, a dog barks faintly, but for all that I am alone in the world with just a few yellow jackets for companions. Many times I’ve come to this orchard. Hot September days with Keren in a stroller, a sunny morning with just the Bear – so small she could hardly get her boots through the long grass. Two years ago we had a gaggle of little cousins ranging from Boy Blue on a blanket on up. Little hands helping gather, then joining the applesauce process with glee. Some years it has been pouring rain and we come home soaked to the skin and covered with mud. Always an adventure. But time is flying and I need to get the apples home.

I take a bucket and head up a hill, down a long row of trees. Toward the back I find a treasure trove of bright red dotting the ground under two trees. One by one my bucket fills, gets emptied into boxes, and fills again. Soon the trunk is loaded with red and gold.

I head back the lines of trees, past the cider press, wave to the pumpkin sorter, weave under the pines and through the split rail fence. Then, relishing the final moments, I choose the gravel roads wherever possible so I can drive under canopies of gold and red. Autumn will pass and this glory will fade into winter, but before I start making applesauce, I want to revel in the color a little longer.

A home on the hill

We start up the hill a sense of anticipation, turn after turn, and finally pull into the driveway at the very top. Initially it seemed impossible to find this house, but now it is second nature. We park, look out over the valley, smell the fresh country air, grab our bags, and head inside. Through the garage, into the little back room, through the long room that is living, dining, and kitchen all in one. Around the corner and up the stairs, and down the hall to our suite of rooms.

A certain scent belongs to this home away from home. It could be the continuous supply of fresh fruit on the butcher block in the kitchen, but more likely it is the scent of fabric. This is a quilter’s home and there are quilts for wounded military and homeless kids always in progress. Interesting country crafts are tucked in the corners, baskets on the rafters, vintage country furniture that looks and feels comfortable.

When the host family is home we enjoy their company, go out for sushi, play Settlers, talk long into the night. But the house is ours when needed, whether or not they are home.

Home, a word that evokes deep visceral emotions. Home -- and this is just one of many.

Another home away from home is near a college campus. The routine there similar. We know where our beds are, where to set up our computers, where the coffee will be brewing in the dark of early morning. The hosts are friends of decades, and their home has been ours on three continents.

A third is a suite north of Boston. A full apartment set off a house where the grandmother lived for a time. Now it hosts visitors, ministry people like us who need a place to land that offers sleep, respite, quiet, and no people. Here the relationship stretches back even further.

Yet another is a wide windowed home facing out on a great lake. No neighbors ever intrude the solitude except for deer, turkeys, fox, and other creatures of the wild. The silence is deafening.

In all these places, and many more, we are at home. The generosity of these host families offers us more than a clean bed. In each place we have the freedom to come, to go, to live, to think, to be – with no strings attached.

I’m heading out the door of the house on the hill in the early morning when my phone rings. I pull it out of my pocket and hear a friend’s voice, “Hey, I’m looking for the car keys.” I tell her where to find them and realize that, while I am at the house on the hill, another of our home-away-from-home hostesses is at my house, ready to drive off in my car.

Home away from home is a lifestyle.