Part Four of Walking with the Ones You Love

Part four was described by my niece far better than I could. 

When my uncle, Walking Wild, posted about walks with my grandfather, I was reminded of similar excursions I’d had with the man. Whistle Lew, as WW refers to him, was a different man by the time I came along. He was a little older and a little softer. When we went on gathering trips, often we’d drive in his boat of a car, but the experience was still similar enough. He took me a few times to gather fresh walnuts. The place we went was a property that was in my neighborhood, but it never occurred to me that those pungent green balls beneath the tree I often walked right by were actually hiding the nuts that my Grandma would use to bake her treats.

It’s still such a fond childhood memory of mine, folding the hem of my over-sized  tee shirt up to create a makeshift sling which I’d fill with my bounty. I’d carry the few I’d collected over for inspection by my grandfather, who would either add them to the bushel of quality ones he’d cut from the tree or toss them back under the tree if they were too far gone. I didn’t actually like walnuts and never ate them, but that never took away from my enjoyment of this exercise and the feeling that I’d pleased my Grandpap somehow by doing a good job.
Walnuts weren’t the only thing we gathered. Sometimes it was berries, sometimes pears. Nearly all of my favorite memories of my childhood take place in my grandfather’s expansive backyard gardens. I still have a love for food that comes directly from the source to the table, and I can’t help but have respect for the frugality of these adventures. Grandpap also taught me, with every nut piled in a bushel and every tousle of my hair along the way, that time spent with children is never wasted.


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