Gatherers

My oldest son had declared that today was a pajama day. The sky was full of rain clouds so I understood his desire for a not-go-anywhere day. Today is a perfect day to read a book. But it being mid-August, I knew there was not much time left to pick raspberries. I piled my other two young children in the car, and as my son stood at the door in his fleece pajamas, waving goodbye to us, he quickly changed his mind. He wanted to come afterall. Throwing on clothes as fast as he could, searching for a book to bring with him (not sure where he thought he might read), he fumbled into the car.

When we arrived at the farm two miles down the road, my chilren bounced out of the car. Their eagerness to pick raspberries surprised me. It had been two years since we have gone to pick berries and I was happy to see they still carried some excitement.

We were all at home in the patch that morning. While my older two were way ahead of me and my 3 year old, I could hear their calls to each other: "oh, there are so many over here," or "look at this!" and "look what I found, look at all of these berries." I would spot them moving in and out between rows, managing to fit their small bodies under a supporting fence so they could catch the berries on the other side of the bush. I too had my responses: "there is a red one," or "look how many there are over there," and I would permit myself to taste one.

There is something magical about berry picking. Even though these bushes are cultivated, there is still a sense of the wild among the bushes. Something about this act of collecting a treasure from the earth and being able to place it in your mouth and taste its amazingly ripe flavour transports us to another time. A time when we were hunters and gatherers and lived off of what nature provided. We did not farm. We did not grow. We just collected the treasures to sustain us.

Usually my children and I collect raspberries for jam. This year, we each had our container to collect to eat. They taste different this year. Maybe this is the way they are to be eaten. Right from the bush, our small harvest in our hands, with smiles on our faces.