A PILGRIMAGE TO BLUEBERRIES

When I was a child, one of the highlights of summer was the traditional voyage to a special mountain on the Massachusetts – New Hampshire border. The mountain is small, only about 1,500 feet; easy to climb, especially when we drove up the bumpy dirt access road by the ski slope, and parked in the tiny shady lot with the old apple tree in the center. On top of the mountain is a fire tower, the kind with metal rails and old bleached-silver wooden steps riddled with carved initials and dates. We would climb the stairs, clinging to the rail when the gusty wind made the tower tremble, just for the thrill of looking down and imagining what would happen if we slipped. If we were lucky, a ranger might be there to open the trapdoor when we knocked, and let us into the tiny room walled with windows.

But the ultimate reason we went to this mountain, instead of just any other mountain, was not the tower. We went for the blueberries.

Between the hot naked granite where pools of rainwater ripple in the wind and big brown grasshoppers jump and click in the sun, are thick green carpets of blueberries. We came with our buckets and baskets and saved plastic containers, and with the warm sun on our backs and the cool breeze in our hair, we would pick and pick, rummaging among the small dense green leaves to find the biggest berries hidden in the shady depths. We ate lunch perched on the rocks overlooking the whole world, watching the cloud shadows move across the land spread out below. In the late afternoon we headed leisurely down the edge of the ski slope, snatching a last few berries, coming at last into the lower shady forest where the path was laced with tree roots. We piled into the old family station wagon and bumped slowly down to the paved road, past the little farm stands, to the ice cream stand on the corner that had the best ice cream in the world. And for days afterward, we would eat blueberries:  pies, and cake, and my Dad just bowlfuls with milk and sugar.

Years later, my own children and I would still make the annual pilgrimage. We never varied our routine, never risked disrupting the mountain muse. The fire tower still stood sentinel with the wind trembling its metal girders, and the grasshoppers still spread their wings purple and yellow in the sun; I could swear the very same grasshoppers I chased as a child. The smell was still the same… blueberries and ferns, sweet and musky in the heat. The cloud shadows still drifted across the land below. Time had held its breath on our mountain.

Since we moved to Vermont, we have not made the pilgrimage to the mountain. But we have found that, no matter where we pick our berries, there is still magic. The way in which our food connects us to the land is an enduring force wherever one may be. And there is something about gathering food in the wilderness that awakens the primal beast. The senses become more alert, to every sound and smell and nuance of the air.  The wildness arises within:  the tendency to startle at the snapping of a twig, at the cry of a bird; the urge to duck and hide from the chance passing hiker. As I gather the small round fruits I feel an intimate connection to the beings with whom I share nature’s abundance:  the bears, the deer, and the countless smaller creatures of field and forest. I keep an ear cocked to where my children are playing, wary of any danger they might be exposed to. For just these few hours, I am rooted completely in the right-here, right-now, in the perfection and simplicity of the present. And the sense of place is very strong; the protectiveness for this little patch of planet that gives me its nourishment and tranquility, and the sense of how I not only fit, but blend, into the rhythm and cycle of it all.

Later, as the sun nudges the horizon, the children come romping back across the field. They are immersed in their own wildness: a pair of wolf cubs munching down a few mouthfuls of sun-warmed berries and discovering the endless wonders of the forest. One eats a stinkbug by accident and spends a comical few minutes in expressive grimaces, mouth open. They turn over clumps of reindeer moss, sniff at spiders, find an owl feather in the grass. Then they are off again, gamboling over the thick soft carpet of fragrant needles in the nearby pine grove.
It’s time to go home, across the rolling fields, over the weathered boards bridging the tiny creek, with the sound of summer insects filling our ears, the chilling air of the summer evening filling our nostrils and lungs, and this perfect moment filling our souls. Tonight we will make blueberry cobbler together, and at bedtime we will snuggle up and read Robert McCloskey’s Blueberries for Sal, smiling about how humans and bears spend a day together on Blueberry Island, gathering food for the winter. We will fall asleep and dream of the smell of blueberries in the sun and of clouds in the wind.

Here in our little place on the planet, the magic is alive and well.