I think one of the best things about growing up the way I did was that it was filled with traditions. Some of them were pretty annoying at the time, such as cleaning up the kitchen immediately after dinner. But others have become ingrained in how I live today. I hang clothes on the clothesline, I like to decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, I preserve food especially from our garden, and I love hiking and being out in nature.
Candidly, I’m not sure that this isn’t some sort of chicken-and-egg thing. I sometimes wonder if I enjoy these things because they were traditions I was taught? Or do I do these things because I enjoy them and somehow link them back to my childhood and retrospectively create a “tradition”? I’m sure that my parents wanted the answer to be a tradition I was taught, just like I want my nieces and nephews to enjoy things long after I’m gone because it was something they learned from me. I’m also fairly confident that some are genuinely traditions and others, well, they’re just a stretch.
If there’s one tradition I know I have it’s picking blackberries. Now, I pick blueberries each year and I’ve picked other things: apples, cherries, peaches, etc. I do remember picking those things with my parents, but I wouldn’t actually call those traditions. And we certainly have a garden full of items to be picked as well. (Hint: the two zucchini plants are over-producers again this year and there are currently four zucchini sitting in my refrigerator.)
But picking blackberries? Yep, definitely a tradition and can be traced directly to my mom and aunts. In fact, it’s such a tradition in my family that my cousins still do it as well. We all grew up donning ratty old jeans and long-sleeved shirts in the middle of August, driving out to the oil lease roads in the backwoods and stopping randomly along the paths to pick blackberries. When we were kids, nearly as many made it into the bowl as made it into our mouths. My mom and aunts’ goals were to pick blackberries for winter enjoyment, especially homemade pies. My goal? Well, it seemed like fun when they asked me to go and it was something I only got to do once a year.
My goal this year? Pick enough to make a blackberry pie this Thanksgiving. And if we are still talking about traditions, this was another one of my mom’s. Always, always, always there was a blackberry pie for Thanksgiving.
But the reasons I love blackberry picking extends well beyond the tradition of gathering some blackberries for a pie and I assume its one of the reasons my mom loved it so much as well. While you can go to the commercial farms, bring a basket and pick fruit from a well-tended tree for a small fee, it isn’t the same hunter/gatherer experience of going into the woods, finding something growing wild and gathering enough of it to feed your family a sweet treat. In such a unique way, this simple act brings so much personal satisfaction. When you’re done, you feel like you have provided something truly special for those you love.
There’s also the feeling of just being out in the woods in summer. There’s no road noise, just the rustling of the trees when the wind blows (and hopefully not the growl of a black bear who has been unwittingly disturbed). There’s the sweet smell of warm grass and the dense smell of the woods, where the earth, humidity and the leaves all emit a slightly husky odor. There is the challenge of driving on roads not really meant for much traffic and deciding when it’s no longer safe to drive and about time to start walking. There’s the camaraderie of doing this with my sisters and reminiscing about our shared history when we did this with mom and other stories from our youth. There’s the excitement when you find a pick-worthy area or even just a small – but loaded – bush. The taste of that first blackberry itself, when it’s still warm from the sun and within just seconds of being picked. It’s a relaxing hour or two when your cell phone won’t – and actually can’t – go off, when the sophistication and trappings of our modern world don’t exist and the activity is still conducted by hand in the same manner it was done 100 years ago. And finally, there is the image which gets seared on your eyelids as you close your eyes to go to bed that night: the image of blackberries piled in a bowl.
So, I have a date this weekend. My sisters and I are meeting at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning with a myriad of “collection bins” in hand. It will be that odd assortment of colanders, metal roasting pans and Tupperware containers. We will have on our “work jeans” and ratty long-sleeved tops, sometimes appropriated from our husband’s closets, and our oldest but sturdiest walking shoes or sneakers for a little hike in the woods. We will all jump in one of our four-wheel drive vehicles and head into the woods. And it will be like transporting myself back in time. This Thanksgiving, along with that made-from-scratch Thanksgiving dinner which includes all of the trimmings including homemade turkey gumbo and pumpkin pies, there will be a blackberry pie sitting humbly on the buffet waiting to be served. For some – as it was for me in those early days when I had not yet fully connected those two activities together – it will be simply a sweet treat. For those of us who know, it will be the culmination of a family tradition.
The Yuppie Homesteader 