Blackberry Stained Fingertips
tart berries in my mouth; reckoning of summer & of god
Blackberry season is ending. I traipse through the fields of my local nature preserve and shriveled branches — dried, hardened, corpses of blackberries — send a shiver down my spine. While I look forward to the crab apples & hickory nuts in the coming coolness, as well as the amber rotting breeze that accompanies them; my heart calls to mourn the last breath of berries for the year.
Wasps, bees, and other pollinators buzz around me, making their last preparations for the fall to come. The sun bakes me with late summer heat, burning its red scar onto my protruding nose. I reach through the brambles to pick the small remnants of a rich season. The tender berries bruise in my pinch, leaving their black-purple hue to sink into the meandering valleys of my fingerprint.
Spot the berry, Reach the berry, Twist the berry, Pull the berry
Spot the berry, Reach the berry, Twist the berry, Pull the berry
And so on, and so on. Filling the bag little by little, minute by minute, breath by breath. I am so entranced in my task that an hour passes in a moment: the simple pleasure of a repetitive task1.
Marveling at the ease with which ripe berries are plucked from the bush, I thank Mother Earth for the gift of her body.
I think of all the millions of years of evolution that fine-tuned our fingers to be gentle and precise enough to pick berries with such ease, to weave baskets to carry them, to make tools to process them, to conjure fire to bake them. I thank Mother Flesh for her hardwork, precision, and the life in her abundance.
I feel the air currents that carry the pollinators, the seeds, the clouds heavy with rain. I thank Mother Wind for her hidden influence and her power — helping to move the ever changing land.
I feel sweat cooling my neck, feel blood moving through my limbs, see the deep greens of the flora around me. I thank Mother Water for her soothing and ferocious body: endlessly cooling, violently pounding, the force of her emotions, unerringly adaptable.
I feel the Sun’s rays feeding the flora around me, through which all energy for life on Earth originates. I thank Mother Fire for her passion, her energy, her liveliness, and her fury.
The berry in my hands is made from a complicated formula of precise sequential anomalies. I look at its shining black surface and I know that God is everywhere and in everything and of everything. God is multitudinous. God is the gift of blackberries, the hands that can pick those blackberries, the tongue that can taste it, and the heart that can love it.
I used to think the only good thing about summer was getting to swim in the heat. I’ve always struggled with regulating high temperature so, summer had become something dreaded. In high school, summer was a time of social isolation. I spent weeks alone on my couch or bed, browsing tumblr, losing my mind, staying up past sunrise. Abandoned in the corner of a suburb with no car and no public transit, with no schedule or motivation, I wasted away. Pickling by the day in my unwashed, unfed, festering, funk.
However, learning to forage has given me an enormous new appreciation for summer. Mullberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries — and those are just the fruits I’ve foraged! The summer is bursting with beautiful wild foods. Even though my body is not built to handle the strength of the Sun and the dense humid air, there are so many species that thrive in the heat. I’ve begun to love the summer for them. I am joyous not only because I can eat them but also, because all the other insects, birds, rodents, deer, etc. can enjoy them as well. I am joyous because the plants are able to use all the energy they’ve stored and chemical processes they’ve done in preparation to produce gorgeous fruiting, flowering bodies. While my brain is overwhelmed by the buzzing of a pollinator flying by my ear, I am joyous for its brightly colored feast.
This summer, I have not been as active or social compared to other summers & I have been scrolling through my tumblr dashboard. I have struggled with staying in touch with friends. And yet, I am not wasting away like I felt I was a decade ago. I am not something that gets worse with time; I am not rotting from the inside and infecting every molecule I touch with my strange existence.
My existence is not something I have to make up for. My life isn’t something I have to prove I deserve. I am respecting my mind, body, and place in the world — my place as an animal who enjoys berries in the summer.
Yes, I’m autistic