Berry Picking Lessons
Commentary by Walter Hesford | FāVS News
I grew up picking blueberries in the Blue Hills south of Boston. In early July I’d rise at dawn, climb Old Baldy, and fill half a small bucket with the low-bush powder-blue bluets that flourished there amid the slabs of granite, sweet-fern, and shrub oak. Enough for breakfast, unless I spilled the bluets sliding down the shale.
In mid-July my family picked the larger but less sweet middle-bush berries. In late July, we’d pick the dark and tangy high-bush berries, braving swampy ground to do so. This was also the time for seedy black huckleberries.
When I moved out here, I discovered a very different huckleberry. And I discovered great disdain for the blueberry. Turns out, most Northwesterners, poor benighted souls, have only tasted the cultivated blueberry, which is as close to a wild blueberry as the rubbery red balls one buys in the supermarket in winter are to actual summer tomatoes.
I failed to convince folks here of the virtues of the wild blueberry until my wife and I happened upon a small patch of them while picking huckleberries in the foothills of Mt. Adams. At home, we made two pies, one of the huckleberries, one of the precious blueberries, and invited neighbors over for a blind taste test. Most mistook the blueberry for the huckleberry pie.
Obvious lessons: When possible, choose local fruits and vegetables; when possible, choose the wild over the cultivated.
I have enjoyed many huckleberry expeditions out here, risking our car, for example, over rugged logging roads to get to Freeze Out outside of Clarkia, Idaho, then risking my limbs stumbling around the rugged terrain in search of bushes bearing beautiful berries. I particularly admire those that hang like large purple pearls. Now my limbs stumble on level ground, so I think I’ll leave it to our South Hill son to take his mother out on some esoteric slope of Mt. Spokane, while I stay in our backyard harvesting our raspberries and pie cherries.
Yes, I know the cherry is not a berry, but while roaming among the branches of our cherry tree this summer I remembered three lessons I’ve learned picking blueberries and huckleberries.
First, when you think you’ve picked everything ripe in sight in a patch, turn around, walk slowly through the patch again, and you’ll be amazed at what you see: More berries waiting for you. Then turn around again, or approach from a different angle or a different height, and Voila!, same miracle. Wider application: How much we miss in life because we don’t take the time to look at people, at things, at beliefs, from different perspectives; how much we can gain by grounding ourselves through a variety of turn-abouts?
Second, the best berries are within reach, or to rephrase an old saying, a bush at hand is worth a thousand out of reach. This sounds obvious, but when berry picking, I’ve found it necessary to remind myself of the truth of this cliché.
I get bored turning round and round in the same patch and am tantalized by the possibility that a bush up a cliff or down a ravine will have more of bigger and better berries. That may be the case, but you may well fall down, spill your berries, and twist your ankle trying to get them. Leave them for the birds and bears to enjoy. Also, in chasing the berry of your impossible dreams, you may get lost and lose sight of your picking mates. Wider application: how often, my attention drawn to those far away, I’ve neglected the welfare of those right around me; dream of doing what is great, but also do well what is possible, within reach.
Third, take time to give thanks. When you find yourself amidst amazing clusters of berries, it’s easy to go a bit crazy and start picking obsessively, without consideration of the berries or the bushes. When this happens to me, I slow down to thank each berry as I pick it. This makes picking more deliberate, more enjoyable.
Wider application: it is always good to give thanks, to express one’s gratitude to whom and what gives us pleasure, gives us life. If our faith so inclines, we might also express thanks to the Great Mother, the Great Spirit.
If we give thanks, we are following in the tradition of the Indigenous people of this land, their land, who since time immemorial have been picking berries here. It is thus fitting to give thanks to them as well.
