Berries in Bloom
It has been a long time since I last published, since it was a bit of a difficult year and things did not go to plan. But I am delighted to be back and am eager to share many stories and thoughts that I collected during my time away. Today I wanted to share three short stories about berries and some wisdom I found while picking them this year.
A bumper crop of berries
By the end of July 2024, the Trøndelag hills were bursting with perfectly ripe berries. In the 4 years that I have lived in Norway, I have never seen such a good season. There were ample raspberries, juneberries, and even blueberries and mushrooms started to pop up early! The hills, forests, and even our neighborhood had such a plentiful excess of raspberries of the best quality — not too squishy or moldy, sweet and a little tart. Mmm! I'm not sure why they were so good this year. Maybe it was due to the fluctuations of warm and cool temperatures with frequent rain? Either way, I was delighted.
Amelanchier genus, juneberries
One day, while picking juneberries on the trees outside a school, a young couple came over and asked if the berries were edible. Juneberries are indeed edible, I replied, but it seems like most Norwegians don't know that or don't like the taste and never seem to pick them. They are originally native to Canada, but have since naturalized and hybridized in Europe. There are numerous species of juneberries as they are a popular choice to use as garden hedges. When grown tall, they form a thick, natural wall of privacy.
In spring, they burst with fragrant white flowers and in autumn their small coin-shaped leaves turn into a spectacular gradient of gold. Juneberries have a subtle flavor somewhere between a blueberry and an almond, which tastes great as a jam or as a filling for Polish gingerbread cakes.
The couple and I chatted for a while, plucking away at the little purple fruit. It was a candid, human moment to exchange advice on the best berry-picking spots in the nearby area. I live so deep in the digital space most days that it feels surreal yet innately natural to harvest food with other people and share foraging tips. It was a beautiful reminder of the connection between both humans to nature and humans to humans. I was a little sad when we finished filling our berry buckets to the brim and set off on our separate ways home, but I hope I'll run into them again one day.
The raspberry perspective
The wonderful thing about picking raspberries is that in order to see where all the good ones are, you need to bend down way low and look at them from different angles. Most of them are hiding under the thick, gnarled mess of leaves and twisting branches.
When viewed from above, one might see a bright red berry or two peeking through an opening in the bushes, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. If you crouch down low where all the spiders dangle and snails cling to the underside of the leaves, you can see the vast cavern of berries hanging in the damp, dark underbelly of the bushes. You will likely get your knees dirty crawling around, and your face or arms a bit scrapped by the serrated edges of the leaves, but the untouched berries that wait in the shadows are the sweetest.
I think this is a good analogy for life too. You might not see the full picture of what lies underneath the rough edges of a situation until you look at it in an unconventional way. You might see much more than you ever imagined.
In these moments I also think of the perspective of a child, both though the lens of berry picking and in life. At a child's height in the 2-meter tall raspberry field, they must easily see the lush landscape of bugs and berries, but are restricted to seeing anything beyond the tall stalks. In the context of life, their world is equally small, yet rich with curiosity and discovery. However, they are limited by experience and access to see the socio-complexities that consume the adult mind.
When I think of an adult in a raspberry field, they can see the vast, intricate landscape around them, but must exert intentional effort to crouch down to find the most delicious fruit. In the context of life, they have a broader overview of how the world works, but can often forget that the most important values are hidden right below them just out of sight.
A jar of wisdom
The thick purple liquid mixture of raspberries and juneberries slowly trickled out of the pot and I carefully pushed it with a spatula into a mason jar. I marveled at how much we were able to harvest this summer, and how I would be grateful for the extra antioxidants when I ate the jam later this year. It was in this exact moment that I had a profound reflection that changed my perspective of the difficult health experience I went through the previous year.
For context, I had grown extremely deficient in a handful of key vitamins and minerals and my body was having an intense autoimmune reaction. Basic tasks that felt should be second nature were a daily source of frustration and pain. I struggled with self-blame for my health condition, even though my rational side knew there was nothing to fault. Healing was just taking longer than I anticipated, despite all my diligent efforts.
I had recently come back from a trip to Svalbard, one of the most challenging Arctic climates, where I had been astounded by the biodiversity and nature's resilience to survive. My mind was always wandering back to that place in awe of how life survives in such a seemingly inhospitable environment.
As I stood pouring the jam, pleasantly warm in my brightly-lit kitchen, I had several epiphanies. The first being that there are billions of creatures on this planet that endure malnutrition, starvation, and nutrient deficiencies all winter long. Many species hibernate or dramatically reduce their activities to conserve energy in the lifeless months. In spring and summer they emerge and feast on the abundance of life's kitchen to recover that which they lacked in winter. Their state of deficiency was not permanent, merely a temporary phase of hardship.
Despite this natural cycle and how it should be more reasonable to reduce one's activities to align with one's physical state of deficiency, human are nevertheless clever beings who have defied the order of seasons and can readily have any food or supplement they wish any time of year in any place on the planet. Because of this, we are expected to work at the same peak performance of physical and mental labor no matter the season. Is that healthy?
Regardless of our ability to acquire the necessary nutrients, is it reasonable to demand the same of our bodies and minds all year round? As I pondered this, I began to understand the slower pace of people here in winter, the desire to be cozy indoors and slow down. The concept had been difficult to accept in my first few years, but now I think I understand.
What I took away from this moment of reflection was a gentle acceptance that my health abnormality was in fact a natural result of adverse conditions that I had endured. My malnutrition was theoretically similar to an animal with little food all winter, or one that had endured an unnatural season of high stress. In both cases there was no fault or blame, simply the laws of nature and the response of the organism. Yes, it sounds a bit sterile from such a scientific perspective, but that gave me relief and closure, both in my mind and as I tightened the jar of jam securely on the glass.
