JOHN PEPIN

Blackberry John left me his old recipe in his will,” – Gordon Lightfoot

It was after suppertime when I backed into a makeshift parking spot off a remote two-track road. I was getting ready to wet my fishing line before the sun went down.

As I came around the brushy side of my Jeep to get my gear out of the back, my eyes widened at the sight of a blackberry branch hanging close to me, with numerous ripe berries within arm’s reach.

I pulled four or five berries off the branch and pushed them into my mouth. The taste and freshness of these wild berries exploded in my mouth. They were so good.

I ate a couple more berries before I again focused my attention on the trout that were swimming around in a deep pool on a bend in the river, just a few feet away from me.

I developed my love of blackberries, or odatagaagominag as the local indigenous people called them, early in my youth.

I think part of the attraction was the relative difficulty in finding these beautiful, glossy looking gems, at least on a kid level.

There were places along the railroad tracks where raspberries grew on plentiful brambles. We’d easily be able to fill our little hands full of the tasty berries with the juices staining our skin.

Chipmunks would compete with us for the opportunities to get to the raspberries first once they had ripened. The railroad tracks were down near the river where we fished and the smell of creosote from the track ties hung heavy in the air on hot summer afternoons.

If we hiked up the trail that led up a low bluff that overlooked the highway, we could find blueberries growing along the trail.

There were even sunny spots we knew where tiny wild strawberries grew on delicate, little plants. These berries looked like little red hearts that tasted so sweet, with the relative huge size of the taste far outstripping the size of the berries.

We also were well acquainted with numerous places where we could find green and blushed-red apples growing. These were probably the most ubiquitous fruit found in our little kid world, which was marked and bounded by sidewalks, streets, rivers and creeks, the highway and numerous sets of railroad tracks.

A girl who used to babysit for us kids in our family first showed me one of the best ways to eat green apples. Known for their sour taste, these apples ranged in eating size from about as big as a yo-yo to that of a hardball – two apt kid comparison values.

She carried a little saltshaker with her and sprinkled some of the seasoning on an apple after she had taken the first bite that broke the skin and exposed the flesh of the fruit.

We could also occasionally find those delightful sweet, purple sugarplums, called “saskatoons” in Canada, to eat. I remember finding hazelnuts with my parents, but I didn’t eat those.

We didn’t have to go far to find a lot of these fruits of the forests not really even outside of town, but I didn’t know anywhere in our little world where blackberries grew.

The first time I really remember ever tasting one was on an afternoon out in the middle of nowhere on a nature drive with my folks. I can still see that day clearly in my memory.

The road, covered with a lot of cobbles and smaller stones like those they use as railroad track bedding, had dipped down a steep, short hill. At the bottom was a small, cold rivulet that gurgled through a culvert under the road.

As the road climbed up the other side of the creek valley, it bent to the right slightly. It was here, just a little way off the dirt road, that the blackberries were hanging in bountiful profusion.

My parents said these were quite big for wild berries and theorized that the bushes might be remnants left over from the early homesteader days when there were old homes built off the sides of the road.

In other words, these might have been “tame” domesticated berries.

Us kids were given old coffee cans to fill with the berries we’d pick so my mom could make pies, jams and jellies.

My dad had taught us how to punch a couple of holes near the top of the coffee cans, using a hammer and a nail, and run a piece of coated wire through to attach the cans to our belts.

This made it easier to pick berries, with two hands free and not having to go back to relocate and retrieve your picking can as the better-looking berries drew you farther and farther away from the road and the car.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in tasting my first blackberry, but I wondered if it might taste like black licorice – another viable kid equivalency term.

It didn’t.

The berry tasted to me almost like a mixture of blueberries and raspberries, with maybe even a sugarplum crushed in there too.

It was different and delicious.

I think I could have eaten my whole can full of picked berries right then and there.

Even as I grew older and acquired the ability to travel farther afield from those bike barriered confines of our kid world, the availability of fresh, wild blackberries remained somewhat limited.

The locations of the handful of really good patches I know of come to mind easily.

A few of these are also located not far from rivers, typically in sunny places. Another couple are along roadsides far from towns or other habitation.

These places are etched on a map in my mind that I tend to peruse on winter days and nights when even one fresh, ripe blackberry would deliver me completely from any type of wintertime malaise or cabin fever.

The blackberries I enjoyed while out fishing recently were only found on that single bramble. The area surrounding the lone bramble was void of any more blackberry bushes.

Even in grocery stores, if you go to the bakery section and look at the fresh-baked pies, blackberry pies are not often found. Certainly, they are not among the top pies baked there.

The tops are usually, apple, blueberry, cherry, peach, pumpkin and pecan.

Though I am a pie lover and will thoroughly enjoy just about any pie – save pecan, coconut and anything with nuts – I not surprisingly rank blackberry near the top of the list among my very favorites.

In fact, most things flavored with blackberries are pleasant to encounter, including cobbler, cheesecake and wine.

Back at home, raspberry bushes line most of the perimeter of our yard.

This year’s crop has already been eaten, some by birds, more by a black bear who had visited the property for a couple of weeks.

I had tasted a couple handfuls myself, but nothing more.

It has been one of those summers when the demands on my time seem to be mounting proportional to my time spent out there in the great outdoors diminishing.

With the belt temporarily broken on our lawn tractor, a type of yellow daisy has taken over the backyard. I see the flowers, opened wide on the sunny side of the yard, pulled shut on the shady side.

These flowers also fold up when it rains. It’s really cool to see because they can do it relatively quickly, certainly within a few minutes.

The air is cool today, like it will be soon most days.

There likely remain at least a few blackberries still clinging to their brambles out there in some of those places I know. I plan to try to find and pick enough for at least a small pie, even though I am sure to wish I had more.

Another summertime is quickly winding down and the blackberries and other berries of the forest will soon all be gone.

Even the hundreds of yellow daisies now blooming so pretty and lovely, casting their wide display across our lawn, will go to seed.

And no doubt I’ll be wishing this old summer season could have lasted a bit longer, at least for a few more starry nights, fishing trips, miles of woods wandering, thunderstorm watching or handfuls of blackberries.

But my spirits will pickup with the colors of the autumn leaves dazzling above me under bright, clear blue sunny skies.

To everything, there is indeed a season.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.