When I was a kid, I lived in the country and berry picking was a big deal for a while. My older brother, his friends and I spent a couple solid summers in the woods near our house foraging and feasting, always on the lookout for a new grow of the raspberries and blackberries strewn randomly amidst the meadows, gullies and woods I was fortunate to call my own then. There were no strawberries or blueberries growing wild where I was, so procuring them involved sneaking into a neighbor's garden and raiding his mounds and highbushes. More than once, while carrying out these covert ops we were sent sprinting off his property by his monstrous German Shepherd, which always seemed to lunge straight out of the setting sun, pulling its chain taut, threatening to yank the eye hook right out of the doghouse, and then me into the doghouse.
But these departures into 'danger' were more than worth it. For it was creeping along the thicket line trying not to get that dog's attention, then finding a quiet spot to indulge my spoils, that I learned the marked difference between 'store bought' and 'homegrown', the difference between the thin, flavor-packed rubies we heisted (the taste of which actually evoked a physical reaction) and the bulbous, overly pithy, largely tasteless frankenfruits my parents bought in the store, usually shipped long distances.
It was crouched behind the neighbor's tool shed devouring the evidence that I learned to expect more, and do so, to this day.
Unfortunately, wild berries are also inextricably linked to a fairly hefty fear that I've carried into adulthood.
One morning, my brother and I were picking our way through waist-high grass between our house and a nearby golf course. It was mid-summer, cloudy but uncomfortably hot and humid; one of those dark days that threatens to storm but doesn't ever do more than sulk. I can't remember what we were doing in the woods, but we'd unexpectedly stumbled across a massive grow of blackberries. We'd gorged ourselves on the succulent fruit, feeling fully entitled to taking our share and vowing not to tell any of the neighbor kids about it, establishing this spot as our private reserve. When we'd eaten our fill, we grabbed as many as we could realistically travel with and started for home.
I was hot and thirsty, and sweat from the exertion of our march and the continuous swatting of mosquitoes and flies was stinging my eyes. It seemed like a long, long walk, felt like we had gone deep into the most primordial depths of the woods and back, but in reality, we probably weren't that far from our house; we never were. Everything seems massive when you're seven, distance most of all. All the go-to places I remember from those days, all the important spots I followed my brother and his friends to, locales that punctuated our existence in the summer months - 'Big Rock', the 'Gully', the 'Sand Pit', the 'Sand Trap', the 'Fort' - seemed like all-day journeys to get to, but were all probably within a quarter mile, half mile tops, of my house.
My brother himself, at thirteen, was a colossus in my eyes, and it was his lead I followed that morning. He always knew the way, not just into the woods and back to our property, but the easiest route through the thicket to get anywhere, trails he and his friends had been charting for a few years, which in kid time is a few decades.
We got within ten feet of the border of our back yard, and I could just see our house in the distance (and already taste the glorious water that would soon be gurgling out of the garden hose, replenishing me head to toe), but before we could step out of the tall grass onto our lawn, a swarm of flying insects started to funnel up from the featureless foliage below us.
"Oh man, I think we hit a bee hive!"
It wasn't my brother's words so much as the unprecedented anxiety with which he spoke that got my attention. It was the first time I remember ever hearing fear in his voice, uncertainty over anything. He dropped his cache of berries and sprinted off in a flash as the swarm intensified. Ten feet away he stopped, turned, and with an anxious bounce on the balls of his feet expressed his frustration that I had not followed.
He called out. I heard him, heard something, but I could not make out the words. I stood completely frozen in the midst of that sudden attack, as though some powerful current were traveling up my leg from the ground, keeping me there and causing me to unwittingly squeeze the berries between my fingers. I was so petrified, I remember feeling as though I were a tiny person trapped on the top floor of a building. I could peak out the window, see the airplanes buzzing me, coming around for another pass, and see my brother in the distance, a mile or two off from this new perspective.
The number of bees (yellow jackets were probably what they were) intensified. They kept coming, funneling up ceaselessly from no specific spot - that is, no visible nest, just the jumble of grass and weeds over which we'd been thoughtlessly tromping not twenty seconds earlier. In my mind they became a single predator circling its prey in ever decreasing circles, and I can remember thinking 'it' wasn't after me so much as the berries. 'It' had caught me taking the berries. 'It' wanted them back. But all that was left of them now was the purple mash between my fingers, and mauve juice oozing down my wrist.
I don't know what would have happened if my brother hadn't dashed back and grabbed me. There were numerous other instances in our youth when, like any older brother, he went out of his way to ditch me at the first opportunity. But not this time. This one and only time, he came to my rescue.
Unfortunately, it was not before one wasp managed to tag me on the fold of skin between the pointer finger and the thumb of my right hand. I shrieked, let go of what was left of the berries with an hysterical shaking of my hands. I grabbed my brother's hand (or maybe he grabbed me by the arm) and we made off for the safety of the house.
The hornets did not pursue us, but as it turned out, my brother had not only dropped his berries when the attack came, but the keys to our house. This turn of events was treated by that 7 and 13 year old like news of a massacre somewhere in another village.
Though he had saved me, I vigorously refused his request to accompany him back to the spot to help him search for the keys. I'll never forget watching from the safety of our patio as he made his way back across the lawn and took his first tentative steps into the tall grass. Nor will I forget my overwhelming relief when I heard him cry out that he'd found the keys, followed a second or two later by a new jolt of fear at the sight of him sprinting out of the thicket at full tilt. Only when he slowed to a leisurely trot across the lawn did I relinquish the notion that the bees were in hot pursuit.
I still have a faint scar on my hand from that sting. It was not the most painful I've endured, but certainly the most memorable for how frightened I was. It is that paralyzed fear, rather than memory of the pain, which makes me uncomfortable around bees and wasps to this day. It's not an irrational fear (like I have of spiders, for instance), but an unavoidable disquiet when they get too close, especially in late summer, when they get bolder, start flying up and checking you out face to face, crawling into your soda can, onto your picnic plate, big as you please. The sight of a paper nest hanging otherwise benignly from the eave of a house, or a tree branch, will almost certainly trigger this unease.
As will, lamentably, the succulent deluge in my mouth at the first taste of a ripe, seasonal berry. Blackberries are the real culprits, but any summer berry will not only unleash as much disquiet as joy, but also a short and powerful impulse toward guilt, as though the berries are still not mine to take.
It was a long time ago; I've strayed further away from youth than I ever thought I would. But it's amazing what I've carried with me, downright astonishing how, in some ways, distance still seems more massive than it actually is.
