By Rebekah L. CowellÂ
I know I’m a Carolina gal when I’ve braved mosquitoes, spiders, snakes and large spiky thorns to reach the much-coveted gems – blackberries. The brilliance of an onyx stone winks at me from behind green leaves, its beacon message, “pick-me,†belying the nest of thorns that awaits my fingers as I probe around looking for the big ones, the ripe ones.
I’m not a brave woman. I’m scared of spiders, and snakes make me shriek and run.
But blackberries have bewitched me to such an extent that I will face snakes and spiders just to get a bowl full of those twinkling orbs of summer goodness. Wild blackberries are normally ripe by mid-June here in the Triangle region. I was worried, with the drought we’ve had, that the blackberries would dry up on the vine, blood red, never ripening into their deep darkness.
My worries have been allayed. This morning I found a glorious unmolested grove of blackberries along a pond. My daughter sits in her stroller and watches me scratch my legs and arms and proudly proclaims, “Blackberries!†She’s only 9 months old, and perhaps in a year or two she will get involved with my North Carolina summertime rite of passage. For now, she watches, and laughs at my exclamations of pain.
The pond is full of frogs, and they call to each other. Male frogs looking for a mate, and female frogs saying, “Come here, big boy!†A cicada sounds out just as I decide I can’t fit another blackberry in my bowl – his call drags me down a sludge of memories, memories of growing up in the Deep South, nights without air-conditioning, when you could barely breathe because of the heat and the cicadas called so loudly outside the window that sleep seemed impossible.
This is quintessential summer for me, the heat of a 90 degree June day, fingers stained an inky deep purple, a bowl of blackberries, itchy scratches on my arms and legs, and one good scratch produces a long trail of blood that passes my knee and meanders down to my ankle – minor scars in the quest of reliving memories of why summer has always had a magic all its own for me.