Just the other day I was listening to the web feed of the Seattle public radio station. I was just so homesick and wanted to hear something from back west. Buffalo is home but not home - I'm probably not making sense. Anyway, they aired a local interest show where the host related that every true Seattleite has their own secret berry spot.
Raspberry and blackberry vines grow wild all over the Puget Sound, in places you'd never think of. Bus stops, highway overpasses, any place the hardy and vines can take root. And they're so delicious when wild. They don't have the taint if artificiality that the farmed fertilized modified aeroponic hydroponic stuff has. No plastic artificial oversweetness. They're firm and crisp and they burst in your mouth all juicy with just a bit of tartness and you can taste the soil from which they grew. Oh Vickie, you'd love them!
I'd love to take you to my own berry spot. I found it some years ago while out for a walk in Golden Gardens Park. I wonder if it's still there? It's been over a year since I last visited my berry patch. Seattle's been so overbuilt lately and those developers are insane, building condos on every little scrap of land, with impossible buildings tweaked to meet the environmental standards. Paid for by software weenies with more money than sense. I doubt my patch has been built over because it's just off the railroad track, still you never now. Yuppies and developers. A combined force for stupidity never seen before. We should drive out to the park and look for it. It's such a beautiful spot. The tracks hug the coast, the sound on one side and a steep tree-covered slope, almost a cliff, on the other.
Today's a lovely mid-spring day, warm and breezy with sun peeking through fluffy clouds. It's a short drive out to Golden Gardens, past the Ballard locks, then a lovely drive along the coast up past the marina, a forest of masts, until we're at the park. I have a backpack full of Tupperware containers, just in case the berries are sill there.
The coast is a narrow strip of grassy land bisected by track which then leaps up in a tree-covered slope to the houses almost a hundred feet above us. Hmmm now where do I turn off? There's no trail here, I have to go by memory, trying to recall how the land and the track and the bushes lie. Oh! Here it is. Walking down the slope through the waist high grass. Careful honey, it gets a little steep here. Now walking parallel to the tracks... I think we're close.
Here it is! Across a little clearing there's almost a solid wall of thorny bushes, with runners as thick as my fingers and bug nasty thorns like cat's claws. Bug plump purple and red berries are plentiful on the vines. Glad to see nobody else as found my spot.
"Here sweetie, will you hold the bowl while I pick?" Buttoning up a heavy long sleeved shirt, no I don't wear gloves - my fingers aren't as nimble if I do. Slowly and ever so carefully I thread my arms between the vines, like snakes, or some contortionist act. One hand moving carefully along the runner, plucking the berries and filling the other. Then carefully backing out of the bush to drop them in the bowl. As I pick you're watching me to see where my hand comes out, ready to catch the berries as I drop them in. Good girl! You're picking up on this.
I'm in a trancelike state -- threading, picking, dropping, then repeat. A little sweat on my furrowed brow. My breathing deep and smooth and regular I'm so focused. And you're rapt in watching me, how I move, how I think, ready for me, always. After some time, it could have been hours but I have lost all sense of time, the bowls are full. No more room for any more of the lovely berries. Oh good, I have enough to make jam -- happy breakfast time!
Oh Vickie, it's such a beautiful day, let's not go home right away, let's stay and have some berries -- oh! You've already had some... naughty girl! C'mon honey let's sit down for a while, it's such a nice warm sunny day, and we're in such a beautiful place. We walk away from the bushes into the sunny clearing, the grass waving gently in the breeze as it brushes up against our thighs. I take a picnic blanket from my pack and we settle down amid the grass, appreciating the beauty in silence. The breeze is blowing in offshore, bringing a smell of fresh salt air to mingle with the scent of the soft golden grass. Beautiful golden grass, green leaves, red and purple berries, pale blue sky and fluffy white clouds. The park is alive and bursting with color. No sound but the wind in the grass and seagulls calling to each other.
"Are you thirsty, Vickie?" I sure am -- picking berries is harder work then you may think. From my backpack I take out a bottle and a pair of wineglasses. Pop! Pouring glasses of sparking cider -- I know you don't do alcohol -- while you open up a tub of raspberries. They're wonderful, sweet and tart and crisp and alive with flavor, our mouths are all tingly even without the cider.
What a perfect afternoon. A lovely day, a simple delicious picnic lunch, and the most wonderful companion I could ever hope for. When we're full, we just close our eyes and lay back on the blanket, soft grass beneath us, gentle sun above, shushing breeze all around us. I feel like I'm floating in one of the clouds. I wonder if you do, too.
