The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish (Proverbs 14:11).

Johnny Appleseed was a wanderer.  In the early days of Ohio's settlement, he walked bare-footed over miles and miles of the frontier with only the simplest of provisions and clothing to cover his back.  Legend has it that he wore an iron pot on his head as he traveled.  During the day, the pot would keep the sun and rain off his head, and at night he would use the pot for cooking his simple meals, made from whatever he scrounged from the day's journeying.  He also carried two burlap sacks with him, wherever he went:  one for carrying his most basic belongings and one for carrying thousands and thousands of appleseeds.

Wherever he went along the frontier, he planted apple orchards.  He would plan the seeds and erect fences in order to protect the seedlings as they grew, and then he would teach one of the locals to care for the new orchard.  Then he would leave and repeat the process in some other settlement some ways further into the wilderness.  Every now and then, he might revisit one of the orchards that he had planted years earlier -- but for the most part, he was a wanderer, a drifter, a sort of early-19th Century hobo.  I can imagine that many of the settlers along the frontier were perplexed by his nomadic existence.  The relatives "back East," back in the established security of "civilization" would have probably been embarrassed and mortified by Johnny Appleseed's antics.  How can you make a living from planting apple orchards when you never stick around long enough to see them reach maturity?  How can you tramp through the vast expanses of the frontier in bare feet?  How can you live with nothing but the shelter of raggedy clothes and an iron pot?  Surely, it's better to be established, secure, respectable, and civilized!  Or is it?

Johnny Appleseed was a wanderer... but he was an upright wanderer!  The stories that have survived throughout the centuries show that he was just as much known for his kindness, generosity, and gentleness -- both to the natural world and to people of all different sorts -- as he was known for his appleseeds.  And it says something that stories are still being told about Johnny Appleseed today!  Furthermore, many of the apple trees (or at least the descendents of the original apple trees) are flourishing throughout the region today.

Johnny Appleseed demonstrated that righteousness was not tied to "civilized respectability," and success was not tied to material posessions.  There were several settlers in Johnny Appleseed's time who made a lot of money for themselves and established large houses and farms and businesses.  But we don't tell stories about them, and we don't see much of the remnants of their labors.  With Johnny Appleseed, however, we see that whatever the circumstances, no matter how much the odds are stacked against them, the upright will find a way to flourish.  They can be outnumbered, outclassed, and out-resourced -- but still, the upright will find a way to flourish.  Like apple trees.