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| March 12, 2010 |
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What pulls me to drive off roads whenever I see them? Is it because they're free? And everywhere, like swallows, in an Oregon summer? The very last berries are dropping off bushes right this minute under the eaves of the Wave Crest Hotel, in the air of salt brine and fog, bushes that grow like big men with bristling hands. I passed their white flowers that rippled like butterflies, and their light perfume in June, when my legs had begun to turn a nut brown and my walk had slowed with the beginning of summer. The road along the old, yellow hotel was filled with blackberry bushes, gathering force. The tide was the lowest of the year, and people were walking out the beach to the volcanic rocks that stand in the waves like far-off castles. It seemed that I could walk forever, breathing in the bushes and the soft, ocean air; I would not get tired, and the waves would keep returning. This is how the berries grow, and grow. On Sauvie Island, it's said, an almost unthinkable mass of blackberry bushes once flourished on a knoll fifty feet above sea level, one of the highest points on the island. A group of explorers poked through it one morning and discovered a wall. The historical society dug out a nine-room house, built in the 1850s and preserved in blackberries. In July I found blackberries springing out from the cliffs on the Wind River, in the forests of Mount Hood, in shallow gullies along highways, even in supermarket parking lots. They fell apart in our fingers, and we ate them in the car until our chins dripped. Warm, and sweeter than sugar. Then we scrubbed the purple juice from the seats, and I promised everyone the best jam this side of the Rockies. So I line up the lids, the honey, leftover pectin and the pots of boiling water-oh, lord, they're hot! The blackberry voices trill and crescendo. My husband hollers up from the basement, "Sandy?" and I stop to see his project. He turns fine-grained cherry, alder, and oak over in his hands, considering them the way I consider the berries. The saw has screamed; there's been a thwacking of paint, and now a lean set of shelves-perfect for jars of jam-stand, under the basement stairs. "Gosh," I mutter, "they're great. You did it so fast." I want to be a woman of purpose, to mash the bowl of berries and to fill the solid glass jars with the wildness and the sweetness, months of eating that can trickle down my kids' chins, just the way the milk once did. Food is love, my mother said. Now these berries will last only another day or two. But blackberries are ancient. The first waves that rubbed bits of sediment from rock must have glimmered with specks of pleasure that ripened into seeds that floated on air, were stroked by light, and were sucked back and forth by waves until they began singing. And in that great singing of the green world, a spontaneous joy flowed from the heart of the plants, and remembering the dust of stars they flowered and gave birth to the effulgent, black fruit. As black as cormorants. As deep as space. What could be more wild than the very reaches of what we do not know, that somehow reaches us, when we snake our hands past the stinging thorns and find the fruit, softer than our own skin? And we stand on the tops of mountains or on serene roads or in a parking lot, watching the red sun drop. I turn off the kitchen light. It's too hot in here. The bowl comes out of the refrigerator and onto the porch. "Julian," I call. "Lilly! Come on out here. Let's be bears." We are going to sit on the porch and eat blackberries until it's night. Until our chins are purple and our tongues are black, and we've swallowed summer. |
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