Pink Pearl

Daughter of 'Surprise'

The “Pink Pearl” is not a precious gem but a rare heirloom apple. The first time I picked one from a tree, skin light green to pale yellow with a rosy blush, I did not find this apple to be exceptionally pretty or at all lustrous (as its name would suggest). When I halved it, I discovered its concealed surprise- a cotton candy-tinged interior. I took a bite. Sweetness was there, but it wasn’t trying too hard, and a cleansing astringency paused in the aftertaste. As I sniff it now, its perfume evokes passion fruit, sap, and spice, then something mysterious, secluded, maybe even wild.

I discovered Pink Pearl some 30 years ago and since then I have been tending the growth of my own tree, cooking with its fruit, and uncovering its fascinating history as I untangle my own. In the early 90s, I was going through a rough patch in my life. Divorced, jobless, adrift, alone a lot of the time, I was searching for what next, where next? A friend invited me to visit Whitethorn, a rural town in the Lost Coast of Humboldt County and host to the Redwoods Monastery, inhabited by a small group of Roman Catholic women monastics.

The jagged Lost Coast is a spectacular stretch of the most undeveloped and remote portions of northern California. The Redwoods monastery is situated in the middle of an expansive old-growth Redwood Forest. Its members follow the rituals and practices of the Cistercian Order originally founded by monks known as “Lovers of the Place,” entwined with nature, and to them a manifestation of the divine. When the first abbess made a visit to Whitethorn from Belgium, she proclaimed the land to be “full of energy, mystery, beauty…and the trees in the grove were like a cathedral.”  There the community settled and articulated their vision — “creative fidelity, simplicity, an accent on experience, mysticism, and the centrality of love.”

These tenets spoke to me personally. My life had become complicated beyond my expectations, my sense of commitment challenged. With a past that veered off the path and a future in doubt, I had lost my footing. I needed a retreat from my life. Simplicity appealed. Nevertheless, what I could claim as a vital sign was my interest in food and when I tasted this apple in this place, my curiosity was piqued. I had learned that some of the great cheeses, beers, fruit brandies, liqueurs, alchemical infusions from herbs and botanicals, and pedigreed French wines are the legacy bestowed by nuns and monks of medieval monasteries.  I imagined the monastics as early practitioners of terroir, realizing its mystical aspects through their embedded sense of place and the transformation of its fruits. I wanted to find out what it would be like to live for a week in a community that had chosen to leave the world and whose lineage reached back to 1098. As a lapsed Catholic, I was not there for the religion, but I imagined that I would at least eat very well.