“I’m back!”

Some weeks ago, in the season of buds and flowers, I took some time to describe how I sussed out the upcoming blueberry crop. Writing that asked for considerable detail about finding little white flowers and mapping their presence and promise. All that was okay, because I had the time. Not so much now, so this will be brief.

Even as the sun’s still high and heated, each day has a little less of it — over 2 minutes of light gone daily; fall’s on the way. Which means I gotta eat…a lot. You may dream thin, but I go for bulk, more meals, more me. I need enough pudge to be able to nap through winter, long or short. So you’ll pardon me, I’m sure, if I simply offer a friendly growl to celebrate the berry season we all adore; there’s enough for all of us, but, given my imperative to gain, perhaps it’s best if I get mine first.

Three Berry Notes from My Human Companion:

Yes, we’ve been out to the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s Crystal Spring berry patch again, even as our recent heat and rain has thickened the air and slowed us. It is, after all, prime picking season. Here are three thoughts brought back with a couple of quarts of blueberries.

– For the best berry aesthetics, it’s good to have a shiny tin pail where the first berries can drum on its resonant bottom. But I run to my berries sometimes, and I would run home. So a pail with its wide mouth doesn’t work. Instead, I’ve fashioned my own device, a container with a handle and a mouth cut to the size I want. Here’s how to make one: take a thoroughly-washed half-gallon, plastic milk jug (or, if wildly optimistic, a gallon), and, leaving the handle intact, cut the opening away, trimming it out to the desired width – enough inches across for easy stowing of berries, but not so many that the berries bounce out. Perfect for pick-and-carry at any pace.

– Berry-folk sort into two types — “clean” and “dirty” pickers. I grew up with a foot in both camps. My Mainer mother chose and plucked her berries in ones and threes; twigs, leaves and the odd caterpillar never got into her pail. My Massachusetts father, on other hand, saw his hand as kin to a rake; he looked for the thickest knots of blue and combed them into whatever he happened to be carrying — a water bottle, his hat, his t-shirt. Over time, I migrated my mother’s way; I went “clean.”

One “clean-picking” scene may suffice: I’m on a knee of mountain rock that points east where the ridge drops off to forest. Fresh bear-scat dyed a deep, iridescent purple says I’m in the right neighborhood, and my own hair rises a bit. Stripping off my t-shirt, I turn to the work. Because I am a “clean-picker,” my cans will hold small seas of deep blue only. At times, I single out particular berries of larger girth and special dusky color; I call them “fat-berries” and drop each singly into the can where they lodge like royals. Back humped to the sky, arms and legs moored to earth, I must look like some pale cub left to forage in this patch while his parents root about in the dark woods below. The morning sun lays a benevolent palm on my back, and the soft rattle of berries dropping into my can punctuates time, then carries it away.

– What about washing your berries? A number of years ago my wife and I were picking berries on the side of a New Hampshire mountain; the year was a good one for berries and they were everywhere. At some point we wound up picking near a mother and her nine- or ten-year-old daughter. Mom was an earnest sort, the type who offers lessons, whatever the moment or task at hand, and she was intent on her daughter’s appreciating how bears depend on their annual berries to grow heavy for winter. Her daughter was more interested in eating berries and wondering aloud about possible pies, but mom persisted. Finally her daughter began to imagine bears, but her vision took a different child-shape: “Ew, gross, Mom,” she said. “I bet all these berries have bear slobber on them. I’m not eating any more of them.” And she sat down and, even as Mom ruefully explained that she would wash all the berries, the girl refused to pick or eat anymore.

My advice: leave the bear-slobber on; they are kindred spirits. May you too grow berry-happy and heavy for winter.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chair of the town’s Conservation Commission, and a member of Brunswick Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com