While this may come as heresy to some of my Slovak and Lithuanian relatives, there actually are more compelling reasons to visit the woods these days than mushrooms.
These are the gift of heaven itself–dark purple jewels the size of thumbnails. They’re out there ripening by the jugful. I say this with a huge bowl of the morning’s harvest beside me, slathered in yogurt.
Yes, this could be a monumental year for raspberries. Those heavy spring rains that delayed so many Midwestern farmers did a magnificent job on the wild fruit and nut crops.
We knew it might be good three weeks ago when the car was bombed with sodden mulberries from a tree along the driveway. These were the biggest, sweetest mulberries I’d seen in years.
Then a bike ride along some forest preserve trails yielded hints of raspberries to come. Clutches of berries abounded, just days from maturity.
Out near our cabin in northern Illinois, the raspberries came into their own this past week. The grandkids went crazy. They sliced through a couple of patches like threshing machines. They came away so stained with berry juice you’d have thought they had been painted for some weird rock concert.
I normally miss the height of raspberry season. I get a little busy chasing fish here and there. By the time I look around, most of these early plants are withered and barren. I always wonder if those patches ever hold good berries. This year I found out.
So I gear up for blackberry season in August, determined to gather enough for a winter’s frozen supply and at least a dozen jars of jelly. The blackberries still are green. But judging by their bulging amplitude, they are preparing a bumper crop as well.
For once, though, I’m scoring big with raspberries–and not those little dried-out pebbles swiftly bleached by intense sunlight. These are blue-ribbon berries by county fair standards–immense, yielding cushions of goodness that roll, when touched, into your hands.
Of course, they don’t come easily. I needed, as usual, a scout to lead me on a berry foray to a farm the other day, and the 9-year-old grandson luckily was available.
He explained to me there always is a price to pay for harvesting good things from the wild. And what might be a toll for raspberries?
“Thorns,” he said. “You stick your arms through bunches of thorns.”
That made sense. I have walked into country cafes in blackberry season looking as if I’d been in a cat fight, with blood-caked scratches on arms and forehead. In the realm of berries, I do get carried away. Of course, in those cafes people are tolerant. Everyone knows what you’ve been doing.
“And mosquitoes,” the boy piped. “Don’t forget the mosquitoes.”
It is not within my power to forget mosquitoes. I am the kind of guy who climbs out of bed in the middle of the night to chase a single whining mosquito through the house.
Unfortunately, mosquitoes and berries go hand-in-hand, and that is something we berry people have to deal with. Now and then the berry gods will plant a patch on the windward edge of an open field and we will be spared, because mosquitoes are notoriously poor flyers in a breeze. That’s why we camp on the windy point of a lake.
But catch them in a tight, muggy, airless corner of some small woody corridor or field and you offer your body to be eaten alive.
My scout thankfully found a nice patch where the bugs weren’t too bad and, in 20 minutes, we picked well over half a quart. Then we drove around the farm to mark other patches, where I’d return on another day, swaddled in hooded jacket with neck scarf and head net, ready for serious business.
We were looking for heavy clusters of three-to-seven ripe berries on every plant, enough to funnel through a palm and straight into a bucket hanging from a wrist. When we rolled by an irresistible clutch in the back corner of a little field, I stopped the truck. And we paid the price.
I could hear an ominous hum of mosquitoes through the window, yet still I got out. The last time I heard that sound was in a tree stand on a bear hunt in Manitoba near a swampy pile of refuse. All you heard all day was the high whine of millions of mosquitoes, sort of like those old radio broadcasts of the Indy 500 with a constant whine of engines in the background. You sat through this protected by a nylon rain suit covered by a bug jacket and cans of spray and tried not to go nuts.
“Stay inside,” I told the boy. “I just want to check these out.” In seconds, though, he was beside me, arms flapping, eyes ablaze with horror.
“There are millions of them in the truck,” he wailed. His head swerved and his voice rose. “And there are billions of them right here.”
I had collected maybe 30 berries, but mosquitoes already were in my mouth and up my nose.
“I think we’d better go,” I said, and the boy nearly burned a path back to the truck.
On the way to town, he cradled our combined bucket of raspberries in his lap, soon to savor the ultimate of rewards.
“I think there are a lot of prices you have to pay for raspberries,” he intoned. “Mosquitoes . . . heat . . . humidity . . . thorns . . . and sunburn.”
That, I told him, was about it. Fortunately no cloudbursts had completed the cycle.
We came to a roadside ice-cream stand in town and ordered a couple of tubs of vanilla, then packed in as many berries as the cups would hold. We squished them in by the scores, one for each mosquito, maybe half a pint apiece.
Then we sat by the railroad and waited for the explosive power of the 4:51 p.m. streamliner to ram through from Chicago.
“This has to be as good as it gets,” said the boy, mimicking a TV commercial. He held up a spoonful of ice cream with 20 or 30 berries clinging to the mess. The cup swirled with a melting, purple, sticky, incredibly wonderful nectar.
I nearly made the mistake of suggesting there might be other fine experiences ahead in life, but managed to shut up in time. On this day, certainly, the kid had to be right.
