Acorns

I'm crunching sandal-clad through dry leaves, live oak leaves, their sharp spines prickly through my socks. Scattered on top of them are acorns. Some oaks in southern California produce acorns that are short and fat, with a little point on the end that makes them perfect for spinning as ersatz tops. These acorns are long and thin, most straight but a few curving like the talon of a bird. They are bright green and smooth when they first hit the ground; later they weather to a soft brown and then to black. This is if the insects and birds do not get to them first. Some have been pecked and chewed before they even land; others sport a tiny hole or two that says a worm is quietly devouring the meat from the inside out. Peel the stiff skin from an acorn and the meat is revealed -- crumbly and brown if old, streaked with lines of black if infested and smooth and yellow if fresh. A thin fuzzy layer, like the inner skin of a hard-boiled egg, can be removed in turn. The meat then gleams, golden with promise and calories.

The native peoples of this region -- Cahuilla and Kumeyaay and Sycuan and others -- migrated seasonally to harvest the acorns when they ripened. Each tribal group gravitated to its favored trees and each family within in the group to theirs. Acorns were pounded and dried into meal, baked into mush, boiled into porridge after the bitter tanins were leached out with boiling water. Some elders today speak wistfully of the sweet blandness of these foods, comforting in the way a favorite childhood dessert or meal would be.

Food aside, it is easy to see why these people gathered acorns. There is something deeply satisfying and compelling -- perhaps even primal -- about collecting a hatful, a jarful, a basketful of these smooth green promises that lie scattered so abundantly among the leaves. I feel it as I move among the sunlight and shadows, bent at the waist, acorn-laden hat swinging. My friends feel it as they drop them into jars to take home and plant or marvel at the smooth beauty of the meat inside. Their small daughter feels it too, though she thinks it only a game to gather up acorns in a frisbee. As she tips them back and forth in the shallow container, it is easy to envision another child, with a shallow woven basket, doing the same.