[October 2025] The smell is unmistakeable. At least, to me. Pungent as citronella, sharp as pine, bitter as citrus rind. Yet somehow soft, slightly soothing — not quite bay leaf or nutmeg.

My grandparents had trees in their yard and this time of year my brother and I would scurry around with the squirrels, collecting the bright chartreuse orbs. We’d pile them over by the old garage in a mesh cage — a bunch of wire my grandpa had nailed together with 2x2s, it once held baby chickens but had long since been cleaned out and repurposed. There the nuts would cure. When the outer green turned deep brown so dark it was becoming black, the shell was easy to knock off. Then we’d hammer open the hard middle and free the gem of nutmeat.

Like for many of us, memories of childhood for me are complex, layered, teeter — not quite celebration, not quite despair. I wouldn’t even call it nostalgia — the world has never been perfect. Were these good days? I cannot really say. I can say for sure that we laughed sometimes. I can say for sure that we cried. I can say for sure that those experiences have cured, and that if I work at it I can find the gems they contain.

As I mull over the horrors of this week’s news, I walk a path near my house, pick raw walnuts from the ground, press them to my nostrils. Who planted these trees? Who left them here for us to find? I can say for sure that, across time and space, we are connected by a thread, by the fibers of this fruit. The planters of these trees, my grandparents and I, everyone who walks or bikes this way and… and. People who adore walnuts, people who despise them, people who feel lukewarm about them, those who are allergic, those who have never tasted walnuts but hypothetically someday could. On and on, the web of interconnection, stretching through every single one of us on this gorgeous planet. When I’m in stillness a moment it’s harder to not see this weave than it is to see it. I know that isn’t true for everyone. But it could be. It could be.