Blenheims
August 2021

Bathed and squinting in the bright mid-day sun, Andrea and I make our way down the rocky hillside into the Blenheim orchard. We navigate the uneven terrain in a hazy stupor, neither of us quite prepared for the warmer climate. Looking around at the trees, we marvel at the proximity of the heavily scented fruit. The apricots are plump and glowing, impossible to ignore, an obvious seduction.

As we make our way along the rows that seem to never end, the blushing flesh of the eager orbs brush against the tops of our heads. Reaching upward with gentle fingers the fruit, with very little encouragement, tumbles from the branch into our t-shirt baskets, bypassing our awaiting palms altogether. We collect the first few without sampling, out of reverence or perhaps polite restraint, but as their floral fragrance catches the warm breeze from the hills above, we inhale deeply and can no longer keep up the charade.

By now, the white California sun is beating down, almost directly above, and we carefully lower ourselves with our delicate parcels down to nearby rocks. In tandem, our wide grinning eyes linked as one, we cautiously sink our teeth into the yielding skin of the warm fruit. The vanilla-honey nectar runs slowly down our chins to our hands as we slurp and the juices pool in the creases of our elbows, hair clinging to our cheeks. 

We quietly suck all the flesh from the stones and then toss them mindlessly to the ground, thinking only for a moment of the future. Without speaking we wipe our lips with the back of our hands, pick ourselves up, and continue to the next tree listening to the leaves as the wind casually makes its way through the orchard and back to the sky.