delicious and the only fruit you can freeze forever and they still come out great for baking, flavor fully intact, deep indigo color unfaded —but for me, they also carry some of the best memories of childhood magically packed into each incredibly nutritional mouthful.
I spent my formative years in Tok, Alaska. That was in the early 50s to 1960s, and at that time Tok was a remote military outpost serving as the junction to the Alaskan Highway. Highway was a glorified name as it was made up of a strip of gravel going north and south and a strip going east and west where you could get seven flat tires in one day of travel, tires not being what they are today. Right at Tok Junction the two roads intersected 350 miles from anywhere else.
A military base, Tok was also home to a hand full of civil service workers running the pipeline junction. There were about 10 kids and we were a wild, tree climbing, waterfall splashing, rock scrambling gang. Yet despite these delightful activities, blueberry season was the highpoint of the summer for all of us.
In Alaska, blueberry picking is "beary" dangerous because grizzly's stake out the patches and they are "deadly-territorial." Consequently, we never went blueberry hunting without Mrs. Shoot, a fantastically wrinkled Blackfoot woman who had a place in the camp because she was the widow of a French-Indian guide who had worked for the military. We thought she was a witch, but that's another story. Equipped with buckets, along with bells on our belts to add gaiety to our trek and hopefully send bears running, we would head out with that sense of danger that thrills you as a kid because you're too dumb to know better. Mrs. Shoot added to our sense of danger by regaling us with stories of all the stupid white people she'd seen over the years killed by a grizzly who found that unfortunate moron raiding the bear's personal patch. As she titillated us with these gory tales, she'd lead us deep into the piney woods on a path that would get us to high ground. Once there, Mrs. Shoot would have us scan long and hard in every direction our lookout provided. She knew where our three blueberry patches were and she directed us where to look and taught us what to look for— any of the tall skinny Alaskan pines that were doing an odd swaying dance in the midst of the other straight as an arrow pines. Apparently, after a tasty gorging on blueberries, a grizzly enjoys a good back scratching against a tree — an activity that sends the tree swaying in great sweeps. Sometimes we'd see that sight. The hair on the back of my neck would rise. Our little band would then head with some rapidity toward a new lookout that would give us a view of one of the other patches in our collection of three. As if that weren't enough fun for any day, we'd usually manage to find a bear free patch, thanks to Mrs. Shoot, and end up with buckets of juicy, sweet blueberries. Laughter reigned as we giggled over purple hands, purple faces, purple tongues and even purple teeth! What could be better! Those yearly blueberry picking expeditions during the long halcyon days of our short summer, when Tok was the land of the midnight sun after months of total darkness —those scary to the right degree days, hiking, climbing and ending up with a full bucket of fruit that was better than any candy I knew —those days were the origin of my love of blueberries and blueberry picking. Alaska's extraordinary beauty, the easy ways of my Blackfoot playmates, Mrs. Shoots sing-song voice telling us tales, or pointing out towards the flat lands below our lookout and making the mysterious statement she often made, "Look, and you will see God's hand out there," were all incorporated into my love of blueberries.Then my parents divorced. After a time, my mom remarried and we moved to my new step dad's home in Pennsylvania. I painfully missed snow covered peaks. Still, we moved into a great old farmhouse on the top of a Pennsylvania style mountain and there were awesome woods. On the mountain, I had a new best friend, Linda Rauch, who lived first house down the mountain from us. We spent all our free time in the woods. I was disappointed to learn that despite the gorgeous array of flora and fauna in the Pennsylvania woods, there were no wild strawberries or blueberries growing ! When Linda dropped this bad-news bomb on me, she must have seen my, "sad as a kid whose dog has died," face because she promptly confided to me that her mom had a blueberry patch and she was sure her mom would let me pick blueberries there. (Kids are often "sure" about stuff that their parents wonder how in the world they came up with such an idea.) I was two years older than Linda and had grown-up on an army base having breakfast with my Dad and the officers on Saturday mornings, gaining some savvy about adults as I listened to them talk about "how things were" on a myriad of topics. Thus, I was skeptical and figured Linda's mom might be just as happy as a grizzly to let me into her blueberry patch. However, much to my surprise, Linda's mother, who was a kind and generous woman, said she would let me know when the blueberries were ready and I could come and pick berries with her children.
True to her word, she alerted me one day when I was visiting Linda that her three kids would be picking blueberries the next day and I could pick some too. In fact her words were, "Pick as many as you want."
When the day arrived, Mrs. Raugh was at work so she did not see me appear with two big buckets from our milking shed. (We had two dairy cattle at the time). Afterward, I kinda' figured she regretted such a carte' Blanche offer and had only made it because she didn't know she was making it to a dedicated, blueberry picking pro. I knew how to quickly and efficiently scoop blueberries into a bucket. (There's nothing like knowing a grizzly may appear any moment and eat you to hone your blueberry picking skills!) Linda and her siblings were jaded blueberry pickers and didn't pick many before they flopped onto the soft grass of the hill and declared themselves done. I, on the other hand continued picking with hungry concentration, and with a speed that surprised and horrified Linda and her siblings I filled my buckets to overflowing. My two brimming buckets made their nearly empty vessels look pretty sad. I generously explained to them that one of the secrets of my success was that I stuffed my faces with blueberries to fuel my efforts. I remember Linda's worried face and her siblings smirks when they told me their mom didn't let them eat the blueberries while they were picking. I really remember Mrs. Rauch's face as we trooped down the hill from the patch and she saw my full buckets and my big, messy, purple grin. I was not invited again.
I must note in fairness to my mother that she was also at work as I abused neighborly generosity. When she got home and found me packing blueberries into our freezer, she had only to ask a few question in that scary way mother's have to come up with the idea that I had taken advantage of Mrs. Rauch in some way. I couldn't see how she could be right, but later I had to decide that she must be, as an adult, better able to figure out the weirdness of adults. Even though Mrs. Rauch told me to come and pick blueberries and I did so with great enthusiasm, to my bitter disappointment I was banned from the patch for the rest of the years we lived on the farm.
Despite long years with no access to blueberries, I did not lose my passion for the fruit and the pursuit, so when my husband and I moved to Iowa in the late 90s to three acres up on a hill in the country, the first thing I did was locate a northern strain of blueberries and try to plant bushes. I was told blueberries didn't really make it in Iowa. I knew the soil was all wrong, but thought I could amend the soil. Over the last 20 years I've lost at least 10 bushes to deer, a sort of ant that builds its' hill right around your blueberry "bush" and eats it down to nothing, rabbits who are professional chicken-wire removers, and killing winters that fluctuate between arctic and thaw and then back again. I put parentheses around the word "bush" because the soil keeps the baby stalk you plant from growing very fast or at all. The soil is so inhospitable to blueberry bushes that the slow growing bushes are also weak of limb. Out of all my attempts and considerable outlay of money, I have one bush that merits the name and yields about 10 cups of big, fat, indigo goodness each summer. That single bush brings me great joy.
The other day, as I was picking blueberries from my one bush, I was wondering why the quest for this small fruit has been woven through my life, or rather why I have pursued it so diligently and treasured the small victories in a large patch of defeats. After a period of pleasant meditation as I picked my indigo jewels, I wondered if God hadn't used the tiny blueberry to teach me that good things are worth the struggle, that working in and with nature is a reward and delight in and of itself, and that the pursuit of life is just like my pursuit of blueberries. There will be lots of defeats and disappointments—Jesus actually promises this in the Bible. But there will always be the sweet things in life too and we are to pluck them, pop them in our mouth and suck every particle of sweetness and joy in them and throw back our heads and laugh with purple lips and tongues and teeth. Life is sweet! The lesson of the blueberry has been one of the many lessons that God in his mercy wove into my life to prepare me for this long battle with terminal cancer that I have fought.
The Bible is shock full of great promises of God's love, care and provision for us, but it's also full of statements like, 'we will be killed for his namesake', and, 'life will be a pathway full of travails and suffering.' No matter how hard and painful my cancer has been, at certain points I never have to look long to see people way worse off than I am. How do you put those very opposite life views together? One of my favorite theologians and authors, John Piper explained it by saying God fulfills the promises of his constant love and care of his children by making sure that we will not face anything in life that will rob us of our faith. That takes my breath away, and fills me with awe because I can look back over my life and see so many happenings, circumstances, and lessons that prepared me for cancer. And in the midst of this cancer, family members have given me such support and love. Into my life have come such amazing, generous, funny, caring, sacrificially giving friends, as well. My church has defied the old adage, "out of sight, out of mind," and helped and supported my family and me in very real and powerful ways. Cancer has taught me so much about the goodness of people and the mercy of God, that even though I wish I could have learned these lessons some other way, I cannot regret the priceless gift of what I have learned! Pluck the goodness from each day and suck all the goodness right down and laugh for the sheer joy of it. And when you fail, give yourself a pass. Tomorrow is another day.
In his book, "The Problem of Pain," C. S. Lewis writes, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
