Free food

I was introduced to free food by my father.  He found chokecherries during a hike near Riley Lake, where we used to vacation, picked them, and brought them back to the cabin.  For a whole afternoon, we prepared the berries, juiced them through a jelly bag and made chokecherry jelly.  He was sure they had plenty of pectin, and the jelly set up nicely.

My next experience was on a Girl Scout hike.  We found lots of blackberries in a hedgerow and picked them into our hats.  They were added to our homemade ice cream that evening.  Delicious.

Since then, I have scavenged apples, peaches, chokecherries, blueberries, raspberries, currants and other fruit growing wild on untended trees and bushes.  I have also eaten morel mushrooms, nettles, pigweed, purslane, wintergreen, mint and other found edibles.

Once, while wandering in the woods picking blueberries with James, he asked me if I knew where we were.  I knew we were north of the railroad tracks, west of Wolf Lake road, and south of Second River, but I told him I wasn't exactly sure where.  To him, the world was divided into "know where you are" and "lost".  He suggested we begin building a shelter in which to winter!  He was much relieved a few minutes later to discover we were within hailing distance of the house.

Also in Michigan, I took a job picking raspberries.  The owner of the patch had a policy of paying his pickers in berries.  At first, there were many pickers getting a few raspberries for jam, but as the season wore on, they stopped coming.  Since the owner had health issues and was unable to pick the berries himself, I kept coming every day and dealing with berries every night for the remainder of the season.  We had raspberries for years thereafter.

This week, I visited my favorite serviceberry patch and came home with a five-quart pailful. As I reached up to pull down an especially fine branch, I distinctly heard my first husband singing:
"the higher up the cherry tree the sweeter grows the cherry
the more you hug and kiss the girls, the sooner they will marry"

Ricochet

Our family made a mass journey to the hot springs during cousins' week.  It is a 2+ mile hike with the steepest terrain at the end of the trip.  I was plodding along in the rear with the younger grandchildren until we reached the last stretch, at which point they burst forth joyously and I was panting to catch up.  Soon I was having to rest after every ten steps.  I had not realized I was in such poor shape.  Finally, I stopped altogether.  I could see the piles of clothing and backpacks ahead, but I just couldn't take another step.  I wanted to just sit down and cry for my lost youth.  When I had made this hike with my scouts only ten or twelve years ago, I kept up with them fine.  My daughter was waiting patiently for me to recover.  "Just go on up", I said. "I'll come along at my own pace."  She looked me full in the face.  "I'm not leaving you.  I'ts called the buddy system."  I wonder who drilled that into her brain.