Those little glistening food creatures, so unassuming, so much like little elves, so appealing you can almost feel them smiling at you, maybe even laughing. So shrimp-sized and self-confident at the same time. Little balls of color popping with tastiness. Fragile. Tiny. Juicy. Farmers can't come through with a reaping machine to pick them. They must be handled delicately, each one picked individually, packed together gently.
Did you ever go berry picking at one of those pick-your-own-berries farms? Suddenly, you shed your urban (or suburban) fear of dirt and insects and dive into a field of green bushiness on a hunt, a mystery search for those little morsels hanging innocently on their branches. Some bushes have thorns, some have bees (ouch!). The sun warms you or beats down on you depending on the time of day or time of season. But you've got your trusty borrowed basket in your hands, and you're determined to take on the identity of nature boy (or girl). Just brushing through shrub after shrub, just stepping on that soft earthy surface, just calling out to your friend half an acre away, comparing the fullness of your baskets.
It's an activity well worth the time, because it can slow down your time. Slow you down to the rhythm of plants growing. The rhythm of fruit growing. The rhythm of that other nature -- apart from the human variety.
And did you know when you hold a single strawberry in your hand you're not holding one fruit but dozens of fruit? The strawberry is called a "false fruit." The real fruit are those little yellowy-brown seed-like spots dotting the surface of the strawberry. Each one of those is an individual fruit containing a single seed. Same for the blackberry and raspberry. Each one of those globular droplets is a whole fruit unto itself. It's the blueberries, cranberries, and currants that are the true berries. So all those berries you've reaped in that basket may actually be hundreds more than you had assumed! In fact, all fruit in the summer seems so abundant it can supply enough inspiration to get us through the next colorless winter.
