summer foraging

One of the nicest days I had last summer was spent berry picking in the forest with my friend Sara. Then, we spotted wild cherries, ate thimble berries off the bushes, had a bento lunch on a patch of grass and picked enough huckleberries for a few cakes. We'd been talking for ages about organising another berry picking excursion and yesterday the berries were ripe enough to make it happen.

We headed to the botanical garden at UBC so she could get some berries identified that she picked and planned to make jam with at her friends' house in OK Falls. We walked back toward campus near the park; a fence kept us out of the terrain. We immediately spotted wild blackberries and I started picking them, just to see how many I could get. I got a few, probably about 1 1/2 cups. These are much smaller and sweeter than the Himalayan blackberries that invasively took over parks all around the city. (Not that I'm complaining about being able to pick blackberries in public parks.) We eventually made it onto a path through the park and started picking huckleberries.

When I was a kid we went camping often in the summer. At the time feeling like forced labour, we'd sit in a boat for hours trying to catch rainbow trout and then tromp up and down steep inclines looking for huckleberries. We'd each be passed a massive ice cream pail with a handle and told we wouldn't go back to camp until the bucket was full. But we'd reap the rewards of our hard work all winter, with huckleberry pies and huckleberry muffins. The ones we picked were a dark purple, low to the ground with small, firm leaves.

The ones on the west coast are significantly different than the ones I remember from my childhood. These are on high shrubs and pinkish red, slightly translucent. We picked for hours, each filling 3/4 of a massive handled yogurt container (1.75L). One of the biggest surprises for me was finding one wild blueberry bush; I picked every last one from it! We eventually made our way toward the bus, picking along the way, until a man walking his dog mentioned that the parks people fine you if you're picking berries from the park. He used to pick mushrooms and was told it wasn't allowed in a provincial park. I was dubious but mildly fearful, yet still walked away with a whole slew of berries without guilt.

The berries are all safely stored in my freezer. With the blueberries and rhubarb I got last week and the orange olive oil cake I baked on Thursday, my freezer is filling up. Hopefully these berries (and the pending blackberries I hope to get in August) will see me through the dark days ahead.