Men have sung the praises of fishing and hunting, they have extolled the
joys of boating and riding, they have dwelt at length upon the pleasures
of automobiling. But there is one--sport, shall I call it?--which no one
seems to have thought worth mentioning: the gentle sport of berrying.
Perhaps calling it a sport is an unfortunate beginning; it gives us too
much to live up to. No, it is not a sport, though I can't think why,
since it is quite as active as drop-line fishing. Perhaps the trouble is
with the game--the fish are more active than the berries, and their
excesses cover the deficiencies of the stolid figure in the boat.
What, then, shall we call it? Not an occupation; it is too desultory for
that; nor an amusement, because of a certain tradition of usefulness
that hangs about it. Probably it belongs in that small but select group
of things that people do ostensibly because they are useful but really
because they are fun. At any rate, it does not matter how we class
it,--it is just berrying.
But not strawberrying. Strawberries are so far down, and so few! They
cannot be picked with comfort by any one over six years old.
Nor blackberrying! Blackberries are good when gathered in, but in the
gathering process there is nothing restful or soothing. They always grow
in hot places, and the briers make you cross; they pull your hair and
"sprout" your clothes and scratch your wrists. And the berries stain
your fingers dark blue, and, moreover, they are frequented by those
unpleasant little triangular, greenish-brown creatures known as squash
bugs, which I do not believe even the Ancient Mariner could have been
called upon to love. No, I do not mean blackberrying.
What then? What indeed but huckleberrying! How can I adequately sing the
praises of the gentle, the neat, the comfortable huckleberry! No briers,
no squash bugs, no back-breaking stoop or arm-rending stretch to reach
them. Just a big, bushy, green clump, full of glossy black or softly
blue berries, and you can sit right down on the tussocks among them, put
your pail underneath a bush, and begin. At first, the handfuls drop in
with a high-keyed "plinking" sound; then, when the "bottom is covered,"
this changes to a soft patter altogether satisfactory; and as you sit
stripping the crisp branches and letting the neat little balls roll
through your fingers, your spirit grows calm within you, you feel the
breeze, you look up now and then over stretches of hill, or pasture, or
sky, and you settle into a state of complete acquiescence in things as
they are.
For there is always a breeze, and always a view, at least where my
huckleberries grow. If any one should ask me where to find a good
situation for a house, I should answer, with a comprehensive wave of my
arm, "Oh, choose any huckleberry patch." Only 'twere pity to demolish so
excellent a thing as a huckleberry patch, merely to erect so doubtful a
thing as a house.
I know one such--a royal one even among huckleberry patches. To get to
it you go up an old road,--up, and up, and up,--you pass big fields,
newmown and wide open to the sky, you get broader and broader outlooks
over green woodland and blue rolling hills, with a bit of azure river in
the midst. You come out on great flats of rock, thinly edged with light
turf, and there before you are the "berry lots," as the natives call
them,--rolling, windy uplands, with nothing bigger than cedars and wild
cherry trees to break their sweep. The berry bushes crowd together in
thick-set patches, waist-high, interspersed with big "high-bush" shrubs
in clumps or alone, low, hoary juniper, and great, dark masses of richly
glossy, richly fragrant bay. The pointed cedars stand about like
sentinels, stiff enough save where their sensitive tops lean delicately
away from the wind. In the scant herbage between is goldenrod, the
earliest and the latest alike at home here, and red lilies and asters,
and down close to the ground, if you care to stoop for them, trailing
vines of dewberries with their fruit, the sweetest of all the
blackberries. Truly it is a goodly prospect, and one to fill the heart
with satisfaction that the world is as it is.
The pleasure of huckleberrying is partly in the season--the late
summer-time, from mid-July to September. The poignant joys of early
spring are passed, and the exuberance of early summer, while the keen
stimulus of fall has not yet come. Things are at poise. The haying is
over, the meadows, shorn of their rich grass, lie tawny-green under the
sky, and the world seems bigger than before. It is not a time for dreams
nor a time for exploits; it is a time for--for--well, for berrying!
But you must choose your days carefully, as you do your fishing and
hunting days. The berries "bite best" with a brisk west wind, though a
south one is not to be despised, and a north one gives a pleasant
suggestion of fall while the sun has still all the fervor of summer.
Choose a sky that has clouds in it, too, for you will feel their
movement even when you do not look up. Then take your pail and set out.
Do not be in a hurry and do not promise to be back at any definite time.
Either go alone or with just the right companion. I do not know any
circumstances wherein the choice of a companion needs more care than in
berrying. It may make or mar the whole adventure. For you must have a
person not too energetic, or a standard of speed will be established
that will spoil everything; nor too conscientious--it is maddening to be
told that you have not picked the bushes clean enough; nor too diligent,
so that one feels guilty if one looks at the view or acknowledges the
breeze; nor too restless, so that one is being constantly haled to fresh
woods and pastures new. A slightly garrulous person is not bad, with a
desultory, semi-philosophic bent, and a gift for being contented with
easy physical occupation. In fact, I find that I am, by exclusion and
inclusion, narrowing my description to fit a certain type of small boy.
And indeed I believe that here the ideal companion is to be found,--if
indeed he is not, as I more than suspect he is, the ideal companion for
every form of recreation in life. Yes, the boy is the thing. Some of my
choicest hours in the berry lots have been spent with a boy as
companion, some boy who loves to be in the wind and sun without knowing
that he loves it, who philosophizes without knowing that he does so, who
picks berries with sufficient diligence sometimes, and with a
delightful irresponsibility at other times; who likes to move on, now
and then, but is happy to kick turf around the edges of the clump if you
are inclined to stay. Who takes pride in filling his pail, but is not so
desperately single-minded that he is unmoved by the seductions of
goldenrod in bloom, of juniper and bayberries, of dry goldenrod stalks
(for kite sticks), of deserted birds' nests, and all the other delights
that fall in his way.
For berrying does not consist chiefly in getting berries, any more than
fishing consists chiefly in getting fish, or hunting in getting birds.
The essence of berrying is the state of mind that accompanies it. It is
a semi-contemplative recreation, providing physical quiet with just
enough motion to prevent restlessness--being, in this respect, like
"whittling." I said semi-contemplative, because, while it seems to
induce meditation, the beauty of it is that you don't really meditate at
all, you only think you are doing so, or are going to. That is what
makes it so recuperative in its effects. It just delicately shaves the
line between stimulating you to thought and boring you because it does
not stimulate. Thus it brings about in you a perfect state of poise most
restful in itself and in a complete harmony with the midsummer season.
Yes, fishing is good, and hunting is good, and all the sports are good
in their turn--even sitting in a rocking-chair on a boarding-house
piazza has, perhaps, its charms and its benefits for some;--but when the
sun is hot and the wind is cool, when the hay is in and the yellowing
fields lie broad, when the woods have gathered their birds and their
secrets to their very hearts, when the sky is deeply, warmly blue, and
the clouds pile soft or float thin and light, then give me a pail and
let me wander up, up, to the great open berry lots. I will let the sun
shine on me and the wind blow me, and I will love the whole big world,
and I will think not a single thought, and at sundown I will come home
with a full pail and a contentedly empty mind.