Apples on the Nashwaak

Apples on the Nashwaak tells the stories of five generations of Irish families who called this place “home”.

… a gravel road climbs to a fifty-acre field, to where blankets of paintbrush blend into sky. The Nashwaak River Valley runs far below.

The field lies deserted now, abandoned to wild roses and raspberries. Rock piles—150-year heaps—half submerged in the treeline, icebergs of the understorey.

… a straggle of old apple trees … all that’s left of a life long gone—house, barn, paddocks and sheds; gardens behind fences of cedar rail and stone.

I come here to run my dogs … an open door to the wild, it stirs the wolf in their blood.

This field, these woodland trails … walk them; go deep. Though feet lose their way, the mind finds the path to a settled place. The soul inhales, quiets, soars; begins to nestle in.

…what follows is free flow, a river on the run. Facts carried, facts buried—trails of truth through a field of fiction.

Neil Sampson is a horticulturist who inhabits the worlds he hears in the whisperings of abandoned apple trees. Grafting poetry with prose, he fixes the science of plant physiology with the faith typified by the seed. An historian from way back who wishes he’d stayed there, you can find Neil on Twitter: @neilsam567.