Berry picking

By the Serpentine Fen on a late August evening, I pick wild blackberries. A train whistles and an airplane approaches the airport across the river. In the distance, I hear traffic on the King George Highway.

Here I am alone. There is nobody but me and a few ducks that quack as they land on the nearby pond. I feel a deep peace as I receive the sun-warmed berries, our earth’s offerings of food, directly into my open hands. As the last rays of the sun come from behind the clouds, the berries shine brilliant as jewels, dark green, ruby red, and black. The ripe ones are black and glossy. I do not pick any dull ones, though these are also ripe and sweet, because they squash in the pail, and they are prone to mould. It has never been my custom to eat berries while I am picking. The picked berries go to the pail, and there is a satisfaction in filling it. Still, I occasionally get one or two soft ones that are crushed as I pick them, and these go directly into my mouth, sweetening my tongue with their sun-ripened juice.

Berry picking takes a toll on my hands. The brambly bushes do not give up their fruit without a fight, and I will return home with some thorns in my hands.

Evening is drawing on. Flocks of birds are coming in to land in the water on the other side of the dike. Yet it is difficult to stop picking and leave this place, not because of reaching for one more perfect berry, or one more rich handful, although these things are alluring. It is because of the feeling of peace and oneness, the feeling of being fed here by my mother earth, alone, quiet, undisturbed in the middle of the berry patch, which is, amazingly, in the middle of a city.

Finally, I straighten and return through the scythed grass to the packed dirt trail. My hands are still fragrant from the berry juice, even after I rinse them from the water bottle I always carry on these expeditions.

Blackberries are not my only quarry. A couple of weeks ago, my daughter, now grown and working in the valley for the summer, brought me home some gooseberries that she found at a roadside stand, and I made jam as we like it, a little bit tart. As I have often told her, when I was a little child on an Alberta farm, I picked gooseberries with my mother. We all did. My mother did most of the picking, but we all went with her. My brother, my sister and I were each given a china tea cup with a handle, and asked to fill it. Then we went back to the house, comparing how many we had each got, and then each tipping our cup into the big bowlful which Mom would then wash and cook into delicious jam, a little tart, as I still like it, and as my daughter likes it too.

When I was eight, we moved to northern B.C. There I picked raspberries near the town’s dairy farm, near the rough and newly constructed “corduroy road,” thinking myself rich to find them, yet feeling a little fearful as I heard rustling in the bushes. I knew bears liked berries too.

The night my sister celebrated her graduation from high school, my brother and I took the shortcut through the pole yard to the railway tracks, where we lay down on the grass, seeking out the tiny sweet wild strawberries that we knew grew there, and stuffed them straight into our mouths.

As we got older, we ventured further from home, and found saskatoons, as well as red and blue huckleberries, red and blue. These were a bit more challenging to cook with. When I cut into my first huckleberry pie, the berries rolled out whole, firm, and raw.

I have picked wild berries all my life, and therefore each expedition is attached to the long and pleasant tunnel of memories that goes back and back and back over almost my entire lifespan. Thus, as well as the feeling of peace and gratitude, there is also a feeling of deep familiarity and rightness. On an August evening, this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing. For once, I am unhurried, content.

After taking a last look at the calm pink horizon, I walk back toward the car. Though it is still light, the moon has risen round and full, and it smiles at me across the water. I retrace my steps, looking past the elegant catkins at the now quietly swimming ducks, and hearing at last the soft sounds of my own footsteps on the small wooden footbridge.

My thoughts turn homeward. When I go home I will wash the berries and feed a fresh bowlful of them to my husband, and he will pick the thorns from my hands with tweezers, as he has often done before.