Generally you can find blueberries where there is the combination of sandy soil and Jack Pine trees. Unless you already know where the blueberries are, expect to do some driving around to find just the right conditions and then be ready to do a little walking into the trees. Sometimes a forest fire goes through an area, and many places in that location tend to grow blueberries some time later, like the next summer or so, when things start coming back to life. For some reason areas near rivers can mean there may be blueberries there too.
If it's a good year for blueberries you are apt to find multiple thick patches of the short plants with lush, ripe fruit literally hanging from the delicate branches. The forest floor will even have a blue tinge to it. You can relax and sit down on a bed of moss in the middle of the forest and milk the berries right off the branches, or you might decide to use a piece of dead fall as your stool. On one occasion, my usual berry-picking partner, my Mom and I, stopped to pick blueberries while visiting at Hudson Bay. All we had to pick into were two plastic grocery bags, so when they were full we were done. The berries weren't that plentiful, so it wasn't much of a problem. Picking berries all dressed up and in high heels is NOT the way to go, but berry pickers will mount all sorts of obstacles to feed their addiction to the art. We had attended one of the Homecomings and were heading back across country to the cabin at our lake. The patch we chose was in the vicinity of the regional park, near The Springs, which is located a few miles south of the Bay.
Picking blueberries that are abundant is one of the most joyous feelings, because you're accomplishing something good. If you love that rush and the spiritual feeling of being one with nature then blueberry picking is for you. After awhile, a feeling of renewal starts to exist within you that can become quite therapeutic. Essentially, it is because with every breath you breathe in, you are receiving new energy. You may not know it, but according to a book called The "Celestine Prophecy", the forest itself is a place where human beings can go to get back, absorb and build new energy stores within our own bodies. Scientifically, I think it can be explained by the oxygen and carbon dioxide cycles being complementary when it comes to human beings and plants. Remember what you learned as a kid in school? Humans breathe in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide. What is it that plants take in? Carbon dioxide. Must have something to do with it.
Think about it, where do we go to renew ourselves on our vacations? We go to the forest or the lakes or the mountains and rivers...often with our energy at an all time low, or virtually stripped from us, basically because of the heavy demands we face in our daily lives. Why does our energy get depleted? Well, certain people, by their very personalities, can suck our energy dry by being aggressive, overly needy, or monopolizing our time by talking us to death. Fighting high volumes of traffic, being exposed to pollutants, being around hoardes of people in school and at work has to eventually take it's toll. For the excessive us of computers, watching TV, and being bombarded all day long, we need a prescription for more than just pills. No, I don't know if all this is true, but I am suspicious that it is pretty close.
When the berry picking is good, you may not want to leave the blueberry patch you have found, but dusk will start to roll in and soon an unmistakable chill could run up your spine. No doubt about it, you will need to get out of the bush before dark. Sometimes the berries are found close to the road, but often you will have had to walk several hundred yards into the woods to find the better picking. Previous pickers will often have stripped everything the first few hundred feet in, even worse than the birds, bear and deer. I think they do this because they are chickens. I think they're scared of meeting up with wild life or getting lost if they lose site of their vehicle. With dark approaching and often too fast, that is the very reason why late morning, or early afternoon when the dew dries are the best times to go berry picking from my perspective. Not that I would know, but I'm told that most forest creatures sleep during the day, and move around at night. There are several nocturnal creatures that you likely wouldn't want to encounter after dark. Bats and owls are two that come to mind, not to mention skunks, badgers and porcupines.
When you enter the bush, you can count on at least one bird, likely a crow or raven, just going snake by making the biggest racket they know how. Apparently it's their job to warn the other animals that an uninvited guest has arrived in their territory. If that doesn't make you leave, count on at least one squirrel staring you down from high up in a tree or a safe distance away on some deadfall. He or she will give you the scolding of your life over and over as long as you stay in his vicinity. If you hang around long enough though, he might become your new friend as does occur. Squirrels in general can be a real pain in the butt. The outhouse at my daughter and son-in-law's cabin is virtually unusable because the neighbourhood squirrel continuously fills the hole level with his winter supply of acorns.
One summer, Mom and I were picking blueberries on a road somewhere near the Hanson Lake Road. It was quite late in the afternoon when we got there and it got dark way too fast for us. The berries were huge and "just hanging" and we did not want to leave. Luckily, there was some big equipment clearing brush in a field just over a rise, so not too far away and we rationalized the noise was likely keeping creatures away. Picking blueberries in the dark is almost impossible anyhow unless you have a flashlight. We wound up driving home in the dark, found our way back to Prince Albert, and didn't hit a deer, even though that's when they like to wake up and start crossing the roads. Do you know that salting the highways in the winter is one of the main causes of accidents involving deer and moose? They like to lick the salt. If you see a salt lick in the forest, you'll know some kind of animal passes through there.
Another blueberry-picking session was a little more memorable. Mom and I were picking north of Barrier Lake one late morning, a place that is across the road from a cemetery. We had driven into the bush along the narrow sandy trail with her car for a fairly long way because the berries were so picked over along the main road. Again, the picking was good and we were enjoying every minute as we carefreely moved further and further away from the car. Suddenly, the silence of the forest was broken when we heard a loud crashing coming through the bush towards us. Not knowing what it was, we both took off running towards the car. That woman was probably 75 at the time and out-sprinted me by a country mile! I couldn't even catch her because I couldn't even run, I was laughing so hard at her. The problem with having given birth to two children is you have to be hanging on to "everything" before you cough, sneeze or laugh.. Let your imagination be your guide. We never did know what made the noise, but the whole event made for a great fish ...er... berry picking story.
Also, we threw the cardinal rule about being in the bush out the window. Art Dalgliesh was an old neighbour, farmer, and hunter who lived in Etomami. Hudson Bay is the Moose Capital of the World, so for years there was nothing but American hunters crawling all over the place during hunting season. White hunting suits with orange caps or all orange outfits were everywhere from walking down the main drag of the town to driving on any given side road. Art lived alone in a log cabin south of the Ridge Road and north of Merton and Irene Drechsler's and was a hunting guide most of his lifetime. He actually lived in a different building (possibly a granary) located right adjacent to his original home in later years, because a skunk and a badger got into a fight under his first place. Eventually by the time he was over 70, he left it all behind and moved into town. He always gave us good advice about how to act in the bush. We were afraid of bears, but Art would tell us all sorts of things in defence of bears like don't run, be quiet, they will smell you before they see you and they have to be downwind of you or was it upwind...??. (Somebody else told me how they kill their prey,.. not Art....they give you the bear hug and while they have their arms wrapped around you, they lift up one of their hind claws and gut you)....is this true?? Geez, I hope not, but....
Anyhow, Art had always maintained that he was far more afraid of a bull moose in rutting season. After all, my little brother told me that the female moose only goes into heat once a year, so the bull better be ready and by that time, he's kinda cranky. Art told us the most afraid he ever was in the bush was when he was stalked for way too many hours by a bull moose. God only knows why the bull decided he didn't like Art. Apparently though, they rival a grizzly bear when it comes to getting even! So the cardinal rule in the bush when anywhere near bears is to "not run". Know why? Maybe because they're something like a dog and think you want to play....I doubt it. If you think you can outrun them, forget it...they can do something like 40 or 50 mph....think you'll climb a tree? Forget that, they can climb trees way better...If it's a grizzly, they'll stand there and shake the trunk of the tree until you fall out of it. Luckily, the grizzly doesn't frequent these parts that I know of. Regardless, Mom and I ran off, well at least Mom, with me limping behind trying not to....wet myself.
Another time, Cheryl Washburn and I and our kids took the half-ton truck to pick berries along the Ruby Lake Road north of Hudson Bay. We both lived out there and this was close for us. We were the proverbial berry pickers stripping the berries close to the road this time. Yes, we were the chickens now. We had really just gotten out of the truck and unloaded all the kids out the back, when wouldn' you know it...a full grown cinnamon-colored bear came roaring out of the bush and crossed the road right in front of the truck! I nearly had a heart attack and went into instant paralysis and slow motion. I could barely move, but managed to scream, throw the kids into the back of the truck, yell "sit down and hang on", and get myself into the driver's seat, shut my door and floor it. I was never so scared in all my life. Cheryl was laughing her head off, because she was always the gutsy one, but she was rattled too. Honestly, it was like if everybody had flown out of the back of the truck, I couldn't have stopped to save them. You never know how strong your fight or flight response is until you have to use it.
Some years, the berries aren't plentiful because of frost for instance, so you may find yourself wandering even further afield just looking for them. With a frost, the animals are hungry and they may have reached the patch first so nothing is left. A trip to the dump at the lake one year shows what happens when there aren't any berries. The bears start hanging around scavenging for food. Presto, the conservation officers show up to rig a bear trap. A big barrel is laid on its side with a nice, juicy steak to lure them in. I distinctly recall that whoever got out of the vehicle from our family to throw away the trash got back in and suddenly held a new, and most pungent aroma to their person. In fact, they were carrying it around with them because it was stuck to the bottom of her flip flop. Bear dung....nice. Again, we had to drive far enough away so as not to be accosted by a bear!!
While berry picking, remember to stay within yelling distance of your partners, because it's easy to get turned around in the bush. Apparently, when lost in the bush, a person ends up circling and circling, thinking they are travelling in a straight line. One summer, a little girl about eight wandered away from her home and was lost somewhere in the forested area around our lake. Search parties and aircraft were brought in and a massive hunt went on for weeks and weeks. The helicopters flew up and down the lake several times a day looking for her. Alas, her little body was eventually found somewhere in the forest and it was the saddest day ever. It seemed the whole world grieved with that family for the tragic loss of their little girl.
Even though the forest can be a devastating place, taking away life, it can also be a life giving entity. Over the years I have picked blueberries off the highway north of Hudson Bay with my parents and grandparents; at a place west of there called Greenbush with my Mom and aunts Dianne Fox and Margaret Busby; off the Ridge Road at Hudson Bay with my brothers and sisters and parents and aunts and uncles and neighbours - Alex and Beatrice Grant, Emily Foster, north of Melfort in the Pines with my Mom's cousin Beryl, to name a few.
Happiness is....berry picking - a true Saskatchewan tradition....Need a break from the city? Want to make a great dessert of plain berries or spice things up with pie, jam, jelly or syrup....the sky is the limit because berries are always there and ripe for the picking summer after summer!
Blueberries are wonderful, but you can also pick saskatoon berries, high bush cranberries, chokecherries, and raspberries to name a few. Saskatchewan is rife with both wild and tame fruit and many people are thankful and take full advantage of the sheer abundance available to all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment