Savoring the Sweetness

I've been picking up windfall apples to haul down to the barn for a
special treat each night for the Haflingers. These are apples that we
humans wouldn't take a second glance at in all our satiety and
fussiness, but the Haflingers certainly don't mind a bruise, or a worm
hole or slug trails over apple skin.

I've found over the years that our horses must be taught to eat
apples--if they have no experience with them, they will bypass them
lying in the field and not give them a second look. There simply is not
enough odor to make them interesting or appealing--until they are cut in
slices that is. Then they become irresistible and no apple is left
alone from that point forward.

When I offer a whole apple to a young Haflinger who has never tasted one
before, they will sniff it, perhaps roll it on my hand a bit with their
lips, but I've yet to have one simply bite in and try. If I take the
time to cut the apple up, they'll pick up a section very gingerly, kind
of hold it on their tongue and nod their head up and down trying to
decide as they taste and test it if they should drop it or chew it, and
finally, as they really bite in and the sweetness pours over their
tongue, they get this look in their eye that is at once surprised and
supremely pleased. The only parallel experience I've seen in humans is
when you offer a five month old baby his first taste of ice cream on a
spoon and at first he tightens his lips against its coldness, but once
you slip a little into his mouth, his face screws up a bit and then his
eyes get big and sparkly and his mouth rolls the taste around his
tongue, savoring that sweet cold creaminess. His mouth immediately pops
open for more.

It is the same with apples and horses. Once they have that first taste,
they are our slaves forever in search of the next apple.

The Haflinger veteran apple eaters can see me coming with my sweat shirt
front pocket stuffed with apples, a "pregnant" belly of fruit, as it
were. They offer low nickers when I come up to their stalls and each
horse has a different approach to their apple offering.

There is the "bite a little bit at a time" approach, which makes the
apple last longer, and tends to be less messy in the long run. There is
the "bite it in half" technique which leaves half the apple in your hand
as they navigate the other half around their teeth, dripping and
frothing sweet apple slobber. Lastly there is the greedy "take the
whole thing at once" horse, which is the most challenging way to eat an
apple, as it has to be moved back to the molars, and crunched, and then
moved around the mouth to chew up the large pieces, and usually half the
apple ends up falling to the ground, with all the foam that the juice
and saliva create. No matter the technique used, the smell of an apple
as it is being chewed by a horse is one of the best smells in the world.
I can almost taste the sweetness too when I smell that smell.

What do we do when offered such a sublime gift from someone's hand? If
it is something we have never experienced before, we possibly walk right
by, not recognizing that it is a gift at all, missing the whole point
and joy of experiencing what is being offered. How many wonderful
opportunities are right under our noses, but we fail to notice, and
bypass them because they are unfamiliar?

Perhaps if the giver really cares enough to "teach" us to accept this
gift of sweetness, by preparing it and making it irresistible to us,
then we are overwhelmed with the magnitude of the generosity and are
transformed by the simple act of receiving.

We must learn to take little bites, savoring each piece one at a time,
making it last rather than greedily grab hold of the whole thing,
struggling to control it, thereby losing some in the process. Either
way, it is a gracious gift, and how we receive it makes all the difference.

Emily Gibson, BriarCroft
http://www.briarcroft.com/emily.htm

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