It has been a bumper crop year for pecans. I’ve never cared that much or even noticed them until this year. Even this summer you could tell something was different – the branches were unusually low and heavy with them. And when they started falling, you couldn’t walk anywhere in Central Austin without crunching them under your feet.
In the fall, even though we are usually having amazing weather, a lot of my complaining about Austin centers around the climate. There are lovely things I remember about the North – doughnuts and hot apple cider, pumpkin patches, actual christmas tree farms. There is some of that here, but more as made-up commercialized versions of the real thing, mostly for photo ops. But the pecans are a real thing. And they’re everywhere – parks, yards, even as downtown street trees. You can see people with plastic bags all over town, picking them up one by one. And somehow, you miss this about Austin, or I have. Live oaks, sure. That’s as Texas as it gets. Pecans are somewhow a subtler version of Texas, a “gatherer” version.
And gathering is what I have been doing, on the weekend afternoons, from two big trees in our backyard. It’s a contemplative practice, it’s about noticing. What I have been noticing is how satisfying it is, my eyes picking out the pattern of the rounded brown nut in between the crinkled grey leaves and bright green spikes of winter rye grass. I have been noticing the absolute beauty of the drupes and their peeling husks on the tree, grouped in symmetrical threes. The thin black lines like zebra stripes running down the end of each nut. Patterns everywhere. And the way my whole body responds to them – it’s not just fun to gather pecans because I know they are healthy and protein-rich and, let’s face it, free. There is something else, a physiological response to picking out the patterns that feels so right. And it makes sense – this is what our bodies evolved for, over millions of years. This is why our eyes even exist. The ability to pick out patterns is what helps us find food, see predators, survive.
In our era, where we don’t do so much gathering, it’s what makes art so thrilling. It’s what inspires architecture and fashion. It’s definitely responsible for some of my OCD. It’s strange that all these things are tied together in this way but they are. Our culture is an outgrown of our adaptations to survive, of essentially, our ability to pick out a round nut from a field of grass and fallen leaves.
Little Bug 