I forgot about the berries

July 11, 2013

Yesterday morning I headed out the door for my usual mid-morning exercise. I haven't run for a few weeks. I'm feeling more motivated these days to amble through the woods, than race through.

Brienne came with me. She had barely finished her breakfast and hurriedly put on a summer dress, changing out of her pj's just in time to join me. I had a late morning Skype appointment and I needed to be out and back before that time.

(I'd like to point out at that we had just arrived home from our trip the night before. The house was a post-trip disaster zone and the fridge was nearly empty. These things could have stopped me from getting out the door. They didn't.) 

We rushed out the door together and almost immediately the wind in the trees started to work its magic on me. I was already starting to relax when we walked into the wild raspberry patch a few steps from our door. That's when any sense of rush completely fell away. How can you not stop for berries?

These are little berries, nearly hidden on the forest floor. You'd have to pick a lot of these jewel clustered pips to make any jam. But these aren't jam berries, they're eating berries.

They are "let's go for a walk but spend most of the time crouched on the forest floor picking berries" berries. They are "fill your sundress pocket" berries.

We picked what we could carry in our hands and pockets and then sat by the river to eat them, watching the Eastern Tiger Swallowtails swoop and skitter through the air. (They are so hard to photograph in flight.)

There was still time to walk a little loop along the river path and through the fern forest, as we like to call it.

When we came back out into more open and well lit areas the little strawberries did their best to entice us, but I really couldn't stop at this point, so Brienne kept me on task (because I find it nearly impossible to walk past berry patches).

I had forgotten about the berries, not about the u-pick farms and the baskets and boxes being sold in the grocery stores. Those berries are big and bold, well advertised by the plants and growers alike.

I had forgotten about their smaller cousins, the berries that grow in obscurity on the forest floor, providing food for small mammals and fairies.

These are berries you must stoop to pick. Berries that stop you in your tracks, ruby against the green and brown of the forest floor.

You don't pay for these berries. You don't fertilize, mulch or prune them. They don't give the yield of a cultivated berry patch but they don't ask for anything either. They are nature's gift.

I had forgotten all this but a little walk through the woods yesterday reminded me. And next time I go for a walk I'll bring a little container and not have an appointment waiting for me at home.

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