I want to head directly to the Springwater Trail after work and pick more blackberries. I am running out of space to store them. The freezer will be full at this rate, and they have a life expectancy of about two days in the fridge. I could always dry some, though that takes days (despite the dehydrator company's claim that it takes "just hours"--shah, right!)....

....one way or another, I will manage to do something with the blackberries. I must have those berries, dammit! This is my last summer as an Oregon resident and the last time I will be able to just cruise on over to the trail and load up on free fruit. Naturally everything has its price--in this case, it is my skin that pays....oh, and how.

I like to consider myself as something of a rather apt individual, nimbly pulling the bramble vines aside and deftly plucking the berries and gently tossing them into the collecting basket. Actually I should refine that last remark. The "right" way to pick a ripe blackberry is not to pluck it, but to sort of bend it right at the base of the stem, and it should just fall off. The best berries in the world are the truly ripe ones--nothing like them--just heavenly. However, the big drawback is that they are so damned delicate. Often they will squish right between my fingers (oops!) or perhaps under their own weight once in the basket. The result is a sloppy, juicy, staining mess. Washing the berries is tricky as well.

But the biggest challenge is not the berry but the vine upon which it grows. There are cultivars which are thornless and their seeds are very small, but unfortunately they're pretty bland, too, and they aren't free. So if one is willing to put up with a few seeds, then it's just a matter of how to get the berries without winding up in the emergency room with injuries that look as if a platoon of angry kittens decided to use the berry picker as a scratching post. To be sure, some small injuries are inevitable. Two nights ago I returned home with about five pounds of berries and no less than two dozen tiny scratches on my forearms. The vines are also very good at snagging one's hair and clothing and the result can be a real mess: holes in one's shirt, hair a mess and berry juice smeared everywhere (a hint from Heloise here: Oxy-Clean or another hydrogen peroxide-based cleaner will remove berry stains like magic).

There have been years where I've hauled home twenty or thirty pounds of fruit: and then the house smelled like a heavenly place as I cooked up preserves, made syrup, baked pies and turnovers and made blackberry cobbler. I make a killer pie crust, if I may say so myself (and I just did). I was a semi-permanent fixture in the kitchen--boiling jars, cooking, baking, cleaning, and occasionally looking up to smile at anyone who happened to drop in--no doubt with blackberry seeds in my teeth and red-black stains on my hands and clothes. Sometimes I'd get tired and the whole thing would become a big pain in the ass and I'd just want to be done with it already.

....but come winter when the days are cold and grey, there is something almost magical about popping open a jar of preserves, carefully hand-labelled with the year and the place where I harvested the fruit. The smell and taste seem to somehow make the sun peek out from behind the clouds and I can almost smell the fresh, grassy scent of a beautiful Oregon summer afternoon on a little breeze that seems to come from nowhere.

Perhaps this explains why, in spite of the wounds and the mess, I always have a big smile of victory and anticipation on my face as I plop my basket of berries on the countertop after a successful foray along the Springwater Trail. I've developed enough wisdom to know that I'm making memories as I do so.