There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark, and though Rose Nylund would claim that it’s their cheese, it’s actually something that goes well with cheese: the apple. Torn from their boughs, these fruits have fallen to the forest floor and begun their transformation back to the place from which they came. Decay and decomposition. Seems nasty and gross to some, but it’s the very source of life again. There is beauty here too, if you can bend your mind a different way.
I stumbled upon these fallen soldiers while walking through a secluded corner of Ogunquit. They reminded me of fall days when I would walk home from school and pause beneath a few pine trees, nestling into the rust-colored needles warm from the sun and plucking a few pine-cones to decorate later. I’d sit there in that sublime patch of autumn and retrieve an apple I’d saved from lunch, biting into the crunchy sweetness and peering out from the edge of the forest.
