I’ve been picking blackberries the last few weeks. They are the most aggressive plant imaginable. There is a local blackberry on Vancouver Island with small leaves and a thin vine that creeps along the ground in undisturbed forest areas. The berries are small and their season is short.

Then there are the Himalayan blackberries, with thick tough vines and huge thorns. We were picking the Himalayans. They have a long season, stretching into early October depending on the weather, and the berries are huge. The bushes were on the other side of a ditch, so we backed the truck across the ditch and stood on the flatbed to pick. I still got clawed and scratched but they are so plentiful we filled three buckets.

I learned how to pick these berries from the mother of a friend. She always went out prepared. She wore heavy jeans, tucked into socks, with heavy boots and thick soles. That way she could use her foot to flatten the vines and move forward into the jungle. She wore a cotton shirt, with a long sleeved shirt over so the thorns could grab the top shirt and she wouldn’t get clawed. She had a belt around her waist that was threaded through the handle of her berry bucket. Then she wore one leather glove to grab the vine and left her other hand free for picking. She also carried a wire coat hanger to hook the vines and pull them forward if needed.

I lived on Vancouver Island until my eleventh birthday. Then my family moved to the North Peace area. Time passed, we moved on again to the Kootenays, and it was years later that I decided to return to Victoria to attend university. It was early September, and I was waiting at a bus stop to take me up to the university campus for the first time. There was a blackberry bush behind the bench, and I leaned over and picked a few berries. They tasted like home. I had forgotten how good they were, but those few berries reminded me. I’ve lived on the island ever since.

What wild fruit do you pick near your home?