Viv and I finally took the walk to the sound through Carkeek Park from the shopping center that sits by one of the park entrances this morning, and we’ll be back. The highlight of the walk was a restored apple orchard by the trailside that had been planted by the Pipers, who originally homesteaded the area a bit over 100 years ago. It was a mix of incredibly old and beautiful fruit trees, gnarled and bent, and younger trees planted at the time of the orchard’s restoration in the late 1980s.

It’s quite rare to find a large orchard with such old trees – my grandfather, a fruit rancher, told me that trees are often pulled out at about twenty to forty years – and it was wonderful to wander around the slope, smelling the various heirloom varieties that were fruiting in great abundance in the summer sun. I came home with six; it would have been seven, but the incredibly ripe par I clambered up one senior citizen to pluck fell away as I jostled the branch that bore them.