The boughs of hemlocks and Sitka spruces seesawed in the breeze. Ripe salmonberries hung in the brush, tiny tangerines in a vast field of green. I remembered when I used to pick salmonberries, eat them along abandoned logging roads with the dogs, mush them into a compote for ling cod on the barbecue. I once picked salmonberries along coastal streams and tossed them into slack pools. Seconds later, a rearing salmon would gobble the bounty. I would never see the fish, only the ripple.<\/p>\n
I was once a salmonberry-gathering man, but then I got away from that habit. I got away from so many good habits when I left the refuge in 2008. I long to become a salmonberry man again. To do that, I need to place a big bet, a bet on myself, on my abilities to invent and reinvent. I have no idea what the odds are on this bet.<\/p>\n
It was a gray morning. I sat in the car drinking cheap cold brew, waiting for an extraordinary friend to join me for a hike in the woods.<\/p>\n
My friend arrived even though I was waiting in the wrong parking lot. He intuited that I would be in the wrong parking lot and went there instead. Such is the unique nature of our friendship.<\/p>\n
We hiked the trail and conversed. It was a trail through a mixed hardwood and conifer forest that seemed to have naturally seeded itself, a rarity in an Oregon forest. We saw a rabbit and a squirrel. We saw a majestic big leaf maple and a twisted spruce. We saw a dead tree with nothing but mushrooms for branches.<\/p>\n
The salmonberries were prolific and I was hungry and dragging. Here and there we stopped to eat them. I hadn’t tasted salmonberries in ten years. It all came back to me. I was instantly revived and refreshed by eating salmonberries. There was a new pop<\/i> in my step and energy in my talk.<\/p>\n
I’ve got to find a new home where I can harvest salmonberries around the edges of the property or trespass through a few fallow fields to find them. Those homes are out there, waiting to be reclaimed by salmonberry-gathering people.<\/p>\n\n
The boughs of hemlocks and Sitka spruces seesawed in the breeze. Ripe salmonberries hung in the brush, tiny tangerines in a vast field of green. I remembered when I used to pick salmonberries, eat them along abandoned logging roads with the dogs, mush them into a compote for ling cod on the barbecue. I once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,74],"tags":[6,13,170,250,823],"class_list":["post-4109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-coast_history","tag-matt-love","tag-oregon-coast","tag-oregon-forests","tag-oregon-hiking","tag-salmonberries","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4112,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4109\/revisions\/4112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}