Yogi Berry

The wild black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis) have been incredibly abundant this year and I have been picking gallons of them. These dark, tangy berries dwell on stalks among the tangled profusion of locust, honeysuckle, goldenrod, and multiflora rose that surrounds my family's home. To harvest these delectable globes one must sacrifice at least a small amount of skin because it involves wading into a thicket full of sharp thorns; even long sleeves and long pants cannot provide full protection. However, I have found both the process of garnering the berries and the resulting pies and jams to be worth the scratches.
The harvesting process is a sensual meditation. It starts by my wandering a few meters on the trails that surround our home until I spot the dark, purple-black hue of ripe berries. I pick from the edge at first but am slowly led deeper into the thicket by the lure of more ripe berries within. Almost in unison, my eyes spot a ripe berry and my hand reaches out to pluck it and place it in my pail. Over and over again, this action occurs until my mind is lulled into quietude and finds union with body, breath, and surroundings. My concentration on picking berries (dharana) slips in and out of a meditative state (dhyana). Sweet fragrances tickle my nose, the calling of birds sings gently in my ears, and, under the trees, I am cool in the thicket even though the thermometer says we are experiencing record-breaking heat. My hands become stained a lovely purple-black and occasionally I pop a particularly large specimen into my mouth to savor the rich, tangy, sweet flavor that varies with each berry.

I slowly peregrinate the entire five acres dancing in and out of the bushes. In my circuit, I find intimacy with little grottoes of trees, shrubs, and piles of brush. Each little place has its own spirit--its own song that it sings to me. I am reminded of T.C. McLuhan's descriptions of the relationships between Aboriginal Australians and land. In her book The Way of the Earth, McLuhan reveals how the Aborigines view the land as containing many sacred sites. These sites are marked by landforms (e.g., a rock formation, a spring, a cave, etc.) that ancestral beings created during the "Dreamtime." The "Dreamtime" or "Dreaming" is both a past time of creation and heroic acts by mythological figures and a spiritual world that exists in the current time and place. For the Aborigines, the Dreamtime sites must be tended to in the proper way as they are places of deep connection to the spiritual world as well as providers of worldly needs (e.g., food, water, shelter, etc.). Similarly, for me and my family, the berry "grottoes" around our house yield both spiritual and physical sustenance.