Terhune Orchards

Words inspired by Hunter S Thompson:   By all that is holy and cursed in this great white north, there is a specific kind of manic, low-grade sorcery at work in the fetid orchards of Terhune. A madness that descends upon the young, convincing them that this ritual of harvest is a legitimate form of parenting—and by the five rings of Mounties on the lost power hour, I have bought into the entire savage pageant.

I have been dragging my whelps there since they were mewling pups in a sled. The mythology is now set in stone, eh: they are utterly convinced that the natural order of the universe dictates that an apple must be preceded by a sugar-coated frosted donut and followed by an apple slushie so unnervingly red it could be used to signal a downed aircraft. The actual picking of the fruit is a cruel and unusual delay, a vaguely educational buffer zone between the two sacred pillars of the sacrament. I have watched them evolve from tiny, feral beasts taste-testing gravel-covered windfalls to sleek, efficient predators, their internal radar locked not on the Macintosh, but on the heat signature of the goddamn donut fryer, cutting through the crowd with the cold-eyed precision of a moose in a Tim Hortons drive-thru. It’s a beautiful, terrible thing to behold.