July for me means berries and fresh corn and all the abundance of nature.
I have two favorite blueberry patches. One is just beginning to reveal the occasional ripe berry. They are predictably tart. Last year’s drought yielded few berries. I hope this year’s harvest is abundant and that I’ll be able to freeze blueberries for pie filling.
I also just discovered a new black raspberry patch.
On Independence Day, I remember one 4th of July hike gathering mulberries in “Miss Patty’s Neighborhood.”
I miss my hiking buddy Patty Walsh. We’d enjoyed that day picking mulberries near her home in New Haven, CT. The last I knew she was living in New Orleans. I hope one day to run into her. She wouldn’t know me under my married name and I have no idea if she ever did marry my friend and former fellow DJ at WHUS-FM, Bob Markle.
But on this July 4th, one of the best things about transition times in the woods is the opportunity to observe wildlife. A beaver swims silently along the edge of the lake, not far from where I had seen the otter several months ago. I am close enough to watch it lift its head in rhythmic breathing. Wood thrush, veery, red-winged blackbird and green frog all sing. Now that the babies have fledged, there are fewer voices on this hot, muggy morning.
I am always amazed at how what I do not notice on the way out along the trail is glaringly obvious on the way back. Or maybe those blueberries ripened while I was off watching the wildlife at the lake.
I have been working hard to maximize the time I have to spend with native flora and fauna, before we all become extinct. A pickerel frog appears just inches from my foot, hops past me, and eventually circles me, disappearing into a crevice where two boulders don’t quite touch. It feels like a summer day from my childhood, catching frogs in the muddy pond at the summer camp on my friend Diane’s property.
I have lived long enough to realize that if I mismanage money, I can earn more, but mismanaged time cannot be replaced. Once this moment passes, I may have a memory, but I cannot relive it. That’s obvious, yet many of us sell our precious time for a vague future pay-off. The first ripe berries will not be here in the vague future. They are here now. Next week’s berries will be sweeter - if they are not knocked down in a storm, shrivelled before they ripen or eaten by the birds and mammals that get there first.
I have time, good health, the power of choice and blessings in an increasingly threatened world. I sure do hope things turn around and people start caring about the earth enough to use rather than abuse her resources. But if we are on a collision course with the forces of nature, at least I am maximizing every moment to ensure that I fully experience nature’s wonders while I still have the opportunity and the time.