I left the UW-Madison arboretum last night with a head so full of apple facts and figures that it’ll take a few days here to sort it all out. I now know how to do a graft and why you might want to seal it with paraffin; the difference between native crab apples and imports; to look for heritage trees around the foundations of long-gone farmhouses; why the Shiawanee Beauty may have suddenly disappeared and how the Harrison was successfully restored. I also have really chapped lips from stomping around orchards all yesterday afternoon in the chilly damp of Wisconsin in March.

Last night’s wrapup featured Gary Paul Nabhan, Ben Watson, and Curt Meine holding forth on the some of the more romantic, poetical aspects of apples and apple hunting. Watson read from Thoreau’s long-lost “Wild Apples” — a passionate appreciation of the ugly, abandoned “feral apples”of the world.  Meine concluded an inspired series of freewheeling associative anecdotes (had he been nipping at the cider?) with a heartfelt argument for biodiversity as an essential component and incubator of cultural diversity as well. As I pulled onto the highway last night I had only a vague sense that I would be able to process it all. And then Jean Feraca came on the radio and announced that her guests that night were . . . Gary Paul Nabhan and Curt Meine. Talking about apples. 

If you want to give it a listen, it’s here.