Back to the Future
For the last few weeks it has been the kind of summer that makes us all long for autumn -- mercilessly hot, humid days and steamy nights with no relief in sight. We have had enough rain here, however, to make the yard green and the garden grow. Now if the tomatoes would ripen, we would be in business.
This year's vacation was restful but unexceptional. We spent the better part of two weeks in Iowa, staying first with my Dad and then with my brother. We slept late, ate heartily and got some reading done. We went to a couple of ballgames, the farmer's market and the county fair. Otherwise, we frittered away the time -- except for berry picking.
There is just enough difference in latitude between Maryland and my home in Iowa that the black raspberries that were petering out here were just getting started there. The crop in Iowa was not as plentiful nor the berries as large, but I found more than enough to eat in the southwest corner of what was once my grandparent's farm. Thankfully, the woman who owns the farm now doesn't mind us wandering about.
All the old haunts where we used to go for berries are now overgrown with trees, some 30 feet or more high. As raspberries only grow on the forest edge, I made my way across the narrow creek to the little meadow where cows grazed years ago and the new owner now harvests fire wood. Careful of the poison ivy, I collected about a quart of berries every other day. I even found a few wild yellow raspberries. I can't tell you how many times through the years I've told people that I used to pick wild yellow raspberries as a kid, only to have them tell me they'd never heard of such a thing. Often, I was left with the unmistakable impression that they thought I was making the whole thing up.
Gooseberries were plentiful and some large blackberries had started to ripen as well. I ate a few of the blackberries, but didn't gather any to take home. Why anyone would eat blackberries when they could have black raspberries is beyond me. Blackberries are edible and more attractive than raspberries, but in the flavor race they come in a distant second.
In addition to producing a few quarts of berries (some of which we later added to homemade ice cream), my hike around the old home place proved therapeutic. This is the land I grew up on, land that belonged to my great great grandparents, forty acres I know better than any other forty acres on the face of this earth. It may be nearly thirty years since I have lived there, but the slope of the hills and the meandering path of the creek are as familiar and comforting to me as my grandfather's features in an old photograph.
I'm glad I can still go back to it each year. I keep wondering every time if this will be the last time -- if it will be sold, developed or otherwise become off limits. There is already a development that sits right next to the berry patch. I'm sure it is only a matter of time until someone, in the name of progress and profit, bulldozes down all the canes. And then how will I prove to anyone that I really did pick wild yellow raspberries once upon a time?
For those who like poetry, a fine work by Richard Wilbur follows:
Blackberries for Amelia
By Richard Wilbur
Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year's canes.
They have their flowers, too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petalled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn
As the far stars, of which we are now told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that a night may come in which, some say,
We shall have only blackness to behold.
I have no time for any change so great,
But I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were --
Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait --
And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds, and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.
(Originally published in the New Yorker, July 7, 2003)
This year's vacation was restful but unexceptional. We spent the better part of two weeks in Iowa, staying first with my Dad and then with my brother. We slept late, ate heartily and got some reading done. We went to a couple of ballgames, the farmer's market and the county fair. Otherwise, we frittered away the time -- except for berry picking.
There is just enough difference in latitude between Maryland and my home in Iowa that the black raspberries that were petering out here were just getting started there. The crop in Iowa was not as plentiful nor the berries as large, but I found more than enough to eat in the southwest corner of what was once my grandparent's farm. Thankfully, the woman who owns the farm now doesn't mind us wandering about.
All the old haunts where we used to go for berries are now overgrown with trees, some 30 feet or more high. As raspberries only grow on the forest edge, I made my way across the narrow creek to the little meadow where cows grazed years ago and the new owner now harvests fire wood. Careful of the poison ivy, I collected about a quart of berries every other day. I even found a few wild yellow raspberries. I can't tell you how many times through the years I've told people that I used to pick wild yellow raspberries as a kid, only to have them tell me they'd never heard of such a thing. Often, I was left with the unmistakable impression that they thought I was making the whole thing up.
Gooseberries were plentiful and some large blackberries had started to ripen as well. I ate a few of the blackberries, but didn't gather any to take home. Why anyone would eat blackberries when they could have black raspberries is beyond me. Blackberries are edible and more attractive than raspberries, but in the flavor race they come in a distant second.
In addition to producing a few quarts of berries (some of which we later added to homemade ice cream), my hike around the old home place proved therapeutic. This is the land I grew up on, land that belonged to my great great grandparents, forty acres I know better than any other forty acres on the face of this earth. It may be nearly thirty years since I have lived there, but the slope of the hills and the meandering path of the creek are as familiar and comforting to me as my grandfather's features in an old photograph.
I'm glad I can still go back to it each year. I keep wondering every time if this will be the last time -- if it will be sold, developed or otherwise become off limits. There is already a development that sits right next to the berry patch. I'm sure it is only a matter of time until someone, in the name of progress and profit, bulldozes down all the canes. And then how will I prove to anyone that I really did pick wild yellow raspberries once upon a time?
For those who like poetry, a fine work by Richard Wilbur follows:
Blackberries for Amelia
By Richard Wilbur
Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year's canes.
They have their flowers, too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petalled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn
As the far stars, of which we are now told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that a night may come in which, some say,
We shall have only blackness to behold.
I have no time for any change so great,
But I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were --
Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait --
And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds, and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.
(Originally published in the New Yorker, July 7, 2003)
posted by Jimbo | 1:50 PM
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