Raspberry Heaven

One of the advertised features of our old Vermont farmhouse when we purchased it almost 40 years ago was a patch of cultivated raspberry bushes at the back edge of the property, between a hayfield we do not own and a small parcel of woods that we do. Over the years the woods have grown taller and the raspberry bushes ranker, migrating out of the shade and into the field to get more sun. At present, more of them grow on our neighbor’s land than on ours, but I continue to tend the plants and pick the berries with his permission. That I have always given away more berries than I’ve eaten makes the change of ownership seem moot. I have always thought of myself as the caretaker of those plants. They are my raspberries in the same way that my life is my life and Earth is my home.

There was a time when much of the crop went into jam, beribboned jars that my wife, Kathy, gave to workmates and relatives at Christmas. I picked, she rendered. She left off jam making around the same time she became solitarily self-employed. Ever since, the greater part of the harvest has gone to neighbors along our road and, in bumper years, to the postmistress, the town clerk, and the road maintenance crew. I’m usually able to dispense two to four pints at a time, though I’ve delivered as many as eight with more than enough left over for our table. Because last summer had been especially rainy, many of the berries spoiled before I could get to them, but I still managed to give away nearly 30 pints while probably consuming almost a pint a day myself. I love all kinds of berries, so it’s not unusual to find me foraging in the patch like an old bear. Nor is it unusual to find evidence of an actual bear doing the same. We pick at different hours, so we are never in each other’s way.

When Kathy and I came to this house, our daughter was only a year old, still not walking but precociously verbal. My present forays are colored by memories of carrying her into the patch and placing a berry or two in her starfish hand as she exclaimed, “Rah, rah!” and then, “Mo!” Her mother would call out for me to “Push the berries!” as an antidote to the child’s chronic constipation, but there was no need to push. Although our daughter knew how to say no and gave regular demonstrations of the fact, she never said no to a raspberry.

My father had the same yen. He told me more than once that his idea of heaven was a raspberry patch. When he and my mother came up from New Jersey for summer visits, he would often go directly to the raspberries before knocking at our back door. I think of him, too, when I pick, hoping he is in heaven and finds it at least as full of raspberries as he pictured.

Raspberries are to the tongue what roses are to the nose and eye (and, in fact, are members of the rose family, not true berries at all). In addition to their exquisite taste and nostalgic associations with my daughter’s childhood and my dad, I love my raspberries for a number of reasons. Most are purely sensuous, though a few are symbolic as well. (Do I need to say so? Can you think of any profoundly sensuous thing that isn’t also symbolic?)

I love the way raspberries announce their ripeness by both sight and touch. Some fruits and vegetables can easily be picked before they’re ripe; unripe raspberries resist you, clinging to their stems as if to say, “Not yet.” The period of their ripeness is relatively short; they pass quickly from ripe to overripe and are even more quickly spoiled by refrigeration. Abundant as they are, they have about them an aspect of rarity, like rubies that will allow themselves to be admired but vanish in the jeweler’s hand. They resent storage and defy exchange; their charms are of the moment, a pleasure reserved for the timely forager. Long used to represent perishable beauty, roses are outdone by their edible cousins. Gather ye raspberries while ye may.

There is evidence to suggest that Paleolithic cave dwellers ate raspberries, and though theirs were a wild prototype of mine, the berries could not have been any less desirable and sweet. I feel an atavistic connection to my berry-picking ancestors, especially when bringing a berry directly to my mouth. To eat while picking is the ancient method; it is how we ate for millions of years, leaving our seedy stools behind us. Opposable thumbs, when they appeared, gave us an advantage over those creatures who could pick with only their mouths and beaks. We could pause, inspect, pick several berries at a time before devouring them. I’m seldom more aware of manual dexterity than when I’m berry picking. All my fingers are engaged.

I think of raspberries as the precursors of pills, in both the medicinal and the “White Rabbit” sense: utility and ecstasy compressed into something small enough to be swallowed in an instant. Their visual attractiveness, their convenience to our height and hand tempt one to believe that we were meant to eat them, that they can have no objection if we do. One might gather hallucinogenic mushrooms or dig clams with a sense of committing some violence against them, of appropriating by force or cunning what was never meant to be ours. Not so with berries or with aggregate fruits like raspberries. They are for us, food from heaven. Had the Israelites passed by raspberries on their exodus to the Promised Land, would they have needed manna or even gone after it when it fell? Would they have wanted to cross over Jordan if it had meant leaving their berry bushes behind?