Fifty years ago, even the hottest day in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was bearable and pleasant. A little humid maybe, but even inland, away from the Great Lakes, the temperature was never more than eighty degrees Fahrenheit, tops.
During high summer, when the northern reaches have abundant light, a day trip can last a lifetime. My great aunt would pack us into her 4X4, and then, off we’d go searching for the great berry places. She knew them all. My grandmother would usually join us. She had ulterior motives. After she picked her share of berries, she’d sneak off and search for pine knots in the rotting trunks scattered here and there. She had a special love for how pine knots burn in an open fire, long, hot, and flaring.
I don’t know what it’s like now. Back then, the USFS management of the Hiawatha National Forest left hundred-acre plots of clear-cut land surrounded by rows and rows of re-planted second-growth evergreens, a legacy of growing Michigan and the building and re-building of Chicago.
Even without the set fires The Chippewa (my Indigenous uncle and family use this pronunciation. Some might say Ojibwe now) used to promote wild berries, the acid soils of the UP forests are havens for low-bush blueberries. Every year, the berries would be good in this section or that section. That’s where you’d find us during berry season.
We’d pick quarts of berries, can and freeze some for later in the year, and of course, we'd make a pie or two during berry season. We could find berries out by my grandmother’s cabin too. Usually, there were enough to put on some cereal. A pie there was more of a pipe dream. Don’t get the wrong idea, things were tough for my grandmother a couple of decades after my grandfather died. Fortunately, my grandfather had a handshake deal with the homesteaders who settled there. They honored the agreement until my mother died. She was the last of his immediate family.
Rarer were raspberries and sugarplums. We were warned to be on the lookout for bears, especially if we found sugarplums. Rarest of all were thimbleberries. They were so fragile that we usually ate them on the spot. We never found enough to cook anything with them, but thimbleberries are still my favorite red berry.
When I left the UP, I brought several quarts of frozen wild blueberries with me. I had to leave them with my mother. They wouldn’t have withstood the drive out West in a car without room for a good cooler. I still feel a little pinch of regret for that choice.
When I go back to the north woods and someone says they want to go gather berries, I always go along. When I'm out looking for berries, I can feel my aunt beside me pointing out where to look for the bushes the bears and berry pickers tend to miss. She was an artist.
And somewhere off in the distance is my grandmother, looking for that last pine knot to fill her wood-box. She was a nut.
I miss them all.