As I passed the tree I noticed for the first time the chestnuts that were scattered all around it. I hadn’t seen them the last three times I had walked this way this week but maybe I was bored enough today to finally detect them amongst all the fallen leaves. I bent down, picked one out of it’s open shell and remembered how I used to spend hours trying to pry these open as a child. Looking around, I realized that almost every single shell had already been cracked apart. It was almost November, the world was shutting down again but suddenly I could picture these chestnuts roasting on an open fire for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Wasn’t that a thing? And weren’t these normally expensive? I hesitated and glanced around me. With everything closing the cemetery was becoming much more popular lately. But I was alone and so I bent down and picked up a handful and stuffed them into the pocket of my sweatshirt. I paused, considered for a moment how many chestnuts would be enough and then grabbed another handful. And then another. The back pockets of my jeans bulged and the front pockets of my sweatshirt closely resembled the cheeks of a chipmunk as I wobbled home, slowly so as not to drop any but also with enough pace in the hopes that no one would see me. In the house, I dumped my treasures onto the kitchen table and made Jon come look. “Mother Nature is smiling down on me! Look at these gifts!” Jon fingered the smooth treats and then looked slyly back at me. “Are these all of them?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Nope. Put on your shoes, we’re going chestnut hunting!”
We walked back through the cemetery with an unnatural briskness. As we came upon the magical tree and the treasure chest beneath it, Jon looked upon it in awe. “We should’ve brought a bag.”
With excitement and eagerness we collected handful after handful and stuffed them back again into the back pockets of my jeans and sweatshirt and the back pockets and front pockets of Jon’s jeans, his sweatshirt pockets and then finally the hood of his sweatshirt. Everytime I stood back up and suggested that we might have enough, Jon would point to one more perfect chestnut and then slowly and awkwardly lean down to grab it, inevitably dropping one from the hood of his sweatshirt. I would then pick up that fallen chestnut and we would repeat the process again and again until my hands were full and I could no longer retrieve the chestnuts Jon was dropping.
“We can always come back again.” I offered.
Jon nodded, “You’re right, there’s still enough sunlight to do another trip.”
And so we hobbled back, slower than I had been a half hour before, careful not to drop any along the way.
Back in the kitchen we dumped out each pocket and looked at our bounty.
“This is a lot.”
I nodded in agreement.
Jon quickly grabbed a bag, scraped all the chestnuts into it and then weighed the bag on the bathroom scale. Seven pounds and two ounces of glorious free chestnuts.
“This is a lot. I hope roasted chestnuts are actually good. Have you ever had one?”
He shook his head, shrugged and then smiled again at our treasure.
Meanwhile, I sat on the toilet seat cover and scrolled through instructions to see if we needed an actual fire to cook them on.
“Hang on, this says there are two different kinds of chestnuts. Which kind do we have?” I grabbed one out of the bag and held it near the photo on the phone.
“I think it looks similar?” I leaned in and continued to read. “This says horse chestnuts can make you sick and potentially vomit.” I paused and then read from the article, “Horse chestnut trees are usually found in parks, such as cemeteries and sweet chestnut trees, which are safe to eat, are found deep in the woods, far, far away from all humans. Huh, that’s oddly specific.” I looked up at Jon and watched the sadness creep over his face, as he slowly looked down at our bag of seven point two pounds of poisonous un-roastable chestnuts. And, somewhere deep in the dark, cold cemetery, I heard Mother Nature chuckle.