Wild Fruit
Lately I’m obsessed with wild fruit. There’s so much fruit out there! It’s fascinating.
It started with a mountain bike ride through Wildcat Canyon. I’d bombed Havey Canyon and was out on an exploratory mission to the end of Wildcat. I was feeling tired, yet still somewhat committed to the idea of looping back to the ridge somehow. I began slogging my way up Belgum Trail, which turned out to be not such a good idea as I was soon presented with a series of 20% vertical fire road walls. I climbed a few of them but lost focus. I stopped under a shady tree and noticed it had fruit that looked like rainier cherries. Wild plums. I ate a few and couldn’t stop. Then I walked across the trail and grazed at a blackberry bush for a while; I climbed to the top full of wild fruit.
Now I want to collect wild fruits for a blackberry pie. I want to make wild plum pie; there’s a recipe in the cookbook my sister gave to me for christmas. I walk through Berkeley and leer at the fig trees, the quinces, the lemons. I harvested some mint from the sidewalk Monday to make post Juan’s Place tea. I went over to Brian’s place last week and what was growing in front: a cling peach! He didn’t seem very interested in it, but I was overjoyed.
(And now I suppose is where I admit to harvesting a wee stalk of oregano from Bess’s garden on the way home from a hill ride a few weeks ago. It just sounded so good in my snackmaster sandwich.)
There’s a certain leap of faith involved in eating a wild thing. There’s no guarantee it’s going to taste good. It could be dusty or housing a worm. I don’t have any concern with buying fruits from the market, but out in the wilds it’s a different thing.
Yesterday I rode over the hills and out Happy Valley Road. I didn’t bring any food with me, and towards the end I was starting to fade. But I got lucky: there were millions of ripe blackberries growing out of the creek at the Orinda Country Club. So I parked my bike against a telephone pole and hung out for a while blowing off dusty blackberries. I was sweaty and faint, dorked out in spandex, foraging. But I felt so lucky: each berry tasted different. And there I was, healthy enough to ride forty miles, fortunate enough to own a nice bike and live in a beautiful place. While the suburbanites drove by, insulated from the world, I was standing around counting my blessings and scratching my forearms with wild berries.
August 24th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
This made me think of childhood scrambles down the banks of Putah creek, tupperwares in hand, under attack by mosquitoes, but determined to gather enough Davis blackberries for a cobbler. This afternoon when I went out to water the plants I noticed that the mangy apple tree in my front yard had dropped a few fruits on the lawn. I bit one, narrowly missing a grub of some kind, and it tasted like fall. I think if I position a chair in the right place and get a helper (hint hint) I’ll be able to gather enough to scratch out a pie.