Feast: A Tribal Cookbook

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Last summer was one stoned venture after another into meadows, checking out the main blackberry patch every three days to see if those red ones last week were black yet. We often raced against storms, bears and birds to get to the berries, and in time, developed some pretty sophisticated and very stoned, gathering techniques.

Meadow picking is pretty easy . . . if you can get there before the bear and deer do. Late afternoon is a nice time to go berrying. It ends the day nicely and means that the berries have had a full day of sunlight to aid in ripening. When we pick, we go to the meadow first, picking the ripe berries, and making mental notes of berry bushes still to ripen. At the height of the blackberry season, we hit the same meadow every three days, getting at least 10 quarts of berries in just two hours of picking each time. But that's not the half of it. Meadow picking is merely an introduction into the pleasures of berrying. To the intrepid picker, there are many ways of getting to those hidden berries at the sides of roads or down slopes.

Susan is our champion road picker. Driving up to and down from the meadow on the dirt road, Susan spies a bush here, another bush there of ripening berries. "Stop the car," she shouts excitedly, "we really can't pass over that bush." Hence begins Susan's road trip . . . a slow drive up and down the three miles of dirt road, with stops every few minutes to gather the fruit from solitary bushes that eagle-eye Susan has seen off in the woods. No one can match Susan's eyesight, nor the speed with which she bounds out of and back into the car. Nor can anyone ridicule her favorite method of gathering berries, because it, too, yields berries by the gallon.

Colleen's theory is that if you look for berries in the most difficult-to-reach spot, you'll find them in great abundance. "After all," she reasons, "there isn't an animal in the forest stupid or brave enough to go through what I go through to get to those berries." Dressed in long pants, hiking boots, and a leather shirt, hair tied back, Colleen climbs down impossibly steep slopes and works her way into the bushes going up the slopes. This means numerous falls and incredible hangups in bushes that snag and tear at any available piece of loose clothing or hair, but it also means getting at bushes that haven't been touched all summer and are consequently overloaded with berries.

Whatever way you dig doing berries, do it. It helps, though, to wear clothes that will protect you from scratches and at the same time won't get snagged. Long denim pants, longsleeved shirts, leather jackets, and maybe even gloves are good protective articles of clothing . . . scarves, hats, bound-up hair, keep thorns from tearing at your hair. It's nice to have both hands free, either for getting at berries, or for disentangling yourself from bushes. So punch a couple of holes in some coffee cans, thread some string through the holes, and tie the cans around your waist. Climb hills, work your way through meadows, and dig on the sun, grasses, bees, flowers, and berries.

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