My most nostalgic harvest rituals are of the apple variety.

Barbara Kingsolver

The chapter focused on October in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable, Miracle, “Smashing Pumpkins,” describes harvest rituals. There is something comforting about harvest rituals. The consistency and rhythm and beauty of nature and the seasons is bigger than this moment, or any one moment, really. It feels important to think about harvest rituals right now, not to diminish the urgency of now, but rather to breathe into this time and move forward.

Like Kingsolver, I remember the harvest ritual of going to the apple orchard. I grew up near an orchard that we would visit every year for wagon rides, caramel apples, cider, and basically everything fall. We would always find pumpkins to take them home to decorate. I remember the smell of the pumpkin pies in the pie shop. I remember the crisp taste of the apples. I remember the feel of the straw on the tractor that would carry us through the fields. Those memories are particularly sweet right know as I am separated from family and seasons and the ways in which my senses and memories mark the passing of time.

As an adult in my late 30’s, I made a pumpkin pie from scratch with a friend. We started with the best intentions. We wanted to create a pie to eat while we decorated pumpkins and welcomed fall. A season we both love. We found the perfect pumpkin. We followed a perfect recipe. We baked it the perfect amount of time. We let it cool perfectly. We told perfect stories. After all our effort, we decided that our pie was not that much better than pies that used canned pumpkin and frozen crust. The harvest ritual lesson for me in that pie baking experience – nostalgia is a thing, and there is beauty in friendship, the memories, and the pie. This fall, I want to make a pumpkin pie. I want to think about apples, and sweaters, and family. I want to celebrate the things I know for sure at this time when certainty is as sweet and fleeting as the whipped cream on the pumpkin pie.