There’s just something about berrying. It’s like getting something for nothing. It scratches the hunger-gatherer itch deep inside my soul. I just know that my neighbor Matt’s swampy land near the lake will probably be hiding some blueberries, so with his permission I traipse out into the wilds, hoping that the mosquitoes will leave me alone. In the August heat, my imagination moves me into the coming season. I envision myself unable to move as the autumn rains fall and the snows of January bury me. It makes me feel somewhat cooler, and relieved that I am not a tree, subject to the vagaries of winter. Who knows what they really feel? Who are we to say that they don’t notice and shiver under their bark?
I feel just a tinge of fear. Bears have been sighted in our neighborhood on the edge of this NH forest. Should I creep stealthily around through the underbrush? Or should I burst into song? I choose to sing. No one will hear me. And it might give a bear pause to consider something that sounds so strange. I realize that no one knows I am out here, and wonder what would happen if I were to trip on a branch and fall, rendering myself unconscious. How long might it take them to find me? Would they? But there’s something weirdly liberating about the knowledge that no one on the planet knows where I am at the moment. I’m feeling adventuresome now. Probably not a good thing.
I drift from bush to bush. The blueberries are tiny and scant, but I keep at it. Soon I’ve collected over a cup of them, enough for a batch of muffins. And I have the best recipe ever. Itchy and hot, but satisfied, I exit the woods with my bounty, and let the neighbors know what is still out there.
Memories rise to the surface, reaching all the way back to my adolescent days of hard labor in the strawberry fields of the Pacific Northwest. In the first weeks of June, we kids were herded onto school busses in the early morning, and dumped into the fields to spend the day picking berries. This is how we earned money for our fall school clothes. Oh, the torture of the hot sun and our aching limbs. No child labor laws for us. Each carrier, six big boxes, earned 25 cents. Just about slave labor, but it’s what we did, all day long. We prayed for rain. But there were benefits. Friendship and camaraderie thrived in that misery. Jokes flew back and forth. Deepest secrets were shared. Much of my sex education was gleaned there, later to be discarded for more accurate information. The days dragged on endlessly, but finally ended with us closer to each other, thoroughly tanned, and rich enough to go school shopping. Not a bad way for a kid to spend a few summer days.
Berrying. There’s just something about it.
