Picking Wild Blues

spider web amongst wild blueberries

I went into my son’s room and woke him at 5:30 am this morning. The last two weeks of July are blueberry season in these hills.  Each day we will wake early and head out with jars to pick at sunrise. The nearby forest preserve lands surrounding Crystal Lake are the home of thousands of bushes and while working our way through them the at least five different varieties are evident.   I’m not sure if an early settler here had a hand in developing these patches, but my sense is that a casual sense of cultivating the indigenous berries shaped the picking areas we enjoy today.

Picking berries, if you get into the flow of it, can have a therapeutic quality.  Birds flutter through the bushes singing as they pick with you.  And the mind tends to easily fall into reverie during the repetitious activity, until sudden surprises, like the spider web pictured here, or the owl that shot past overhead, sends one into a heightened awareness.  Such moment of natural immersion help us discover Jung’s insight that “the world-soul pervades all things.”  (Jung, CW XIV, par.322)

We freeze the majority of the crop to use in blueberry pancakes throughout the year.  Some get put to use right away for a few pies.  (Freezing tip: spread the blueberries out on a cookie sheet to freeze and after they are individually frozen, dump them into a plastic bag).

A great part of living at this latitude/altitude is that the seasons keep pitching us opportunities to mix up our engagement with the natural world.   The continual change helps prevent falling into a rut, and the cyclical return keeps bringing us things to look forward to.

picking blueberries