Batter-Splattered: Top Secret Blueberry Patch -- don't even ask!

Everyone's always going on and on about their top secret berry patch. That's all well and good for them and ordinarily I'd be very happy for them (and not at all tempted to stalk them on the weekends, slumped down in my car parked in the street outside their house, wearing dark sunglasses and a large hat, that Pink Panther song playing in the background, waiting for them to emerge from their house carrying their berry-picking pail so I can follow them to whatever remote hillside they've laid claim to). I'm happy for them. Really I am. It's just that I don't have a top secret berry patch of my own.

Until now.

One Sunday not too long ago, my friend Angie and I set out to answer the question of what do two girls do with a great big old pickup truck recently purchased for a scream of a deal for $800? They take it off-road, that's what they do. Or more specifically, we took it down a rutted not-quite-wide-enough-to-qualify-as-one-lane old mining road, lined on both sides by willow branches that screeched down the sides of the truck leaving scores of scratches (oops). The 'road' is dry this time of year but it looks suspiciously like it might be a creekbed come springtime when snowmelt comes gushing down the mountains that loom overhead in every direction.

I'd been hiking in the area a month or so ago and saw lots of berry bushes covered with not-quite-ripe berries and so we decided to head back and see if anything was left. People come from all over to berry-pick in this general region but few have the intestinal fortitude to head down the 'road' we chose and, boy o' boy, were we ever rewarded for our efforts.

After parking the truck and hiking a ways farther up the valley, we found a great big patch of highbush blueberries right next to the road. There were so many blueberries everywhere (everywhere!) we hardly knew what to do with ourselves or which direction to pick in. If we moved from bush to bush in one direction, would we remember to double back and pick the bushes in this other direction? How many hours can we stay? How many hours till the sun sets? Should we come back tomorrow? Should we run home right now and get a tent and call in sick to work and set up camp right here until every last berry is picked?

We were crazy with berry fever.

Berries in the foreground, mountains in the background:

We picked until we couldn't crouch anymore, our backs and legs screaming out for mercy -- the ground and bushes were too wet with rain to be able to sit down amongst them. It was a bit windy and chilly and if we got wet, we might get cold and that might hamper the berry-gathering. That's when I remembered I had waterproof pants rolled up and jammed into the bottom of my backpack. Problem solved -- I pulled those babies on and plopped down in the middle of a particularly thick patch of berries.

Angie, plundering:

Angie's dog amused herself by bolting up and down the mountainsides. On the way back down she would occasionally tap the tiger within and hurl herself right at me whenever my back was turned, threatening to flatten me and my berry jug, veering off at the last possible second, thinking it was screamingly funny to make me fear for my life.

The dog loves me although I can't figure out why. I haven't been able to pet her since she was a puppy because the mere sight of me whips her into such a frothy love-panic that she lunges at me with such ferocious longing that I always reel back in horror with visions of broken jaws and missing teeth dancing in my head. On the drive back to town she was so tired from all that scampering and attempted murdering that she collapsed between us on the truck's big bench seat. I finally got to pet her and I thought to myself, "Huh! So this is what her fur feels like."

Fall colors and blue, blue berries:

We picked berries until we had trouble standing up straight from all those sore muscles and reluctantly headed back to the truck. We'd only seen two other people on the road but on the walk back to the truck we spotted a few more people setting up camp and building a fire. It struck fear in our hearts. Were they there to pick berries?? Our berries? Would they see our full buckets and ask us where we got them?? What if they found our patch?

"Quick!" I said, ducking behind some bushes. "Hide your bucket!"

But where to hide them? Kind of hard to hide a one-gallon milk jug on your person. Could we stick them under our shirts and pretend to be two very pregnant women carrying slightly squared-off fetuses, out for a hike on a Sunday afternoon?? Could we?? We finally settled on taking our jackets off and draping them just-so over the jugs so that you couldn't really tell what we were carrying. We rushed past the campsite, avoiding eye contact, asking each other under our breath, "Are they looking at us? Are they?"

"This borders on sociopathic behavior," I told Angie once we rounded the bend and were out of the campers' sight. She thought about it for a moment then shrugged as if to say she was okay with that.

On the drive back to town, we looked out at the staggeringly large mountainsides, going on and on and on and up and up and up, all completed carpeted in berry bushes. There were berry pickers as far as the eye could see in every different direction.

"There's just so many berries here," we murmured. We'd fix our eyes on a particularly tempting mountainside and say with determination:

"I could pick that."