Talkeetna resident Maureen Chambrone picks LOTS of blueberries on the lower Yukon in the summer, and then here in the fall.
While usually a pleasant pastime, it can become a bit of an obsession…
I have picked blueberries every one of the 18 years I’ve been in Alaska to varying degrees of obsession. And every year I felt like a kid again, discovering blueberries for the very first time, seeing something so beautiful and delicious and hopefully abundant. Now it is late October and I’m still snacking on berries off the bush which causes me to reflect upon this past blueberry season, memorable for the sunny, bug free weather and one which may have been a personal record for me!
To get blueberries, you first need blueberry flowers. The blueberries here in Talkeetna are a phenomenon that way. The flowers come out early, well before the leaves, often when there’s still snow on the ground. I get so excited when I see all those pink urn shaped flowers, the first blooms of spring at my place. There’s no guarantee that blueberry flowers will turn into blueberries but it’s a good start. For me, however, seeing all these Talkeetna flowers is bittersweet since I leave to go work on the lower Yukon River. Will the blueberries be good out there? Will there still be blueberries here when I return?
There comes a time in midsummer when the fervor of spring and early summer suddenly slows down. The first runs of salmon peter out. Many of the wild plants I love to harvest are getting over the hill. Songbirds virtually stop all their singing and are quiet as they tend to hungry chicks. For me, this sudden stopping of the most glorious sounds of nature creates an emptiness, a sadness. The once vibrant world feels lonely now. A lot of this feeling is just fatigue from the long summer days creeping up and acknowledging itself. But the summer is only half over and I don’t want to miss any of it!
Right around this time, in mid-July on the lower Yukon River, blueberries come to the rescue. Suddenly a ripe one will reveal itself on an exploratory hike. Nerve impulses go directly from my eyes to my hand to the blueberry to the mouth without any thought process taking place in my brain. Although often still a little green and quite sour it is the best blueberry of the summer for it signals what is to come. Blueberries will propel me through the rest of summer. Once August arrived a new fervor arrived with it. The bird life, a different kind of bird life from the springtime, was restless and vocal. Geese, both greater white fronted and Canada, took to the air in great honking flocks, often passing over while I picked away. When picking blueberries I am connected to the wild world around me once again. I’m not just passing through, I’m participating. Now whenever I had a reasonable chunk of time off and the weather was good I became obsessed with blueberries. Gallon after gallon I picked, handful after handful I ate. I firmly believe in eating as many berries as I want to when I’m picking them. The point is they are food whether in the wintertime or now and they’ll never be as good as they are immediately after they are picked. However, as I soon learned, you can only eat so many at a time. The back of my mouth was sore and swollen for three weeks from eating too many of the sour berries and my molars stained a dark blue color. The dental hygienist later had to use some extra elbow grease to get that stain off.
One day 4 of us from camp took a couple of boats to Blueberry Slough and picked for several hours. It was a 70 degree day and I took a swimming break then went back to picking. This was a great summer for thunderstorms and now one approached. An enormous dark grey cloud crept out of the north and swallowed up the blue sky and sun before it. Everyone else quickly bailed and headed back to camp, away from it. I insisted I was going to finish filling my container. Stupidly I hadn’t brought any rain gear or warm clothes. I was dressed in shorts and short sleeves and was already slightly chilled from the swim. But I had to fill my container! I madly snatched fingers full of berries. Thunder drum-rolled closer. Lightning flashed. I pondered waiting it out, but shivered at the thought. My container was almost full. A dense curtain of rain was fast approaching. The first rain drops struck and jolted me to action. Enough! I ran for the boat, grabbing a blueberry or two if it was convenient. Finally I committed, put a lid on it, put my life jacket on, and shoved off. Luckily they left me the Peregrine, the fast boat, and I thrust the throttle as far forward as it would go. I left in the nick of time, skidding around the bends of the slough, staying just ahead of the dense curtain of rain and the lightning. 10 minutes later, back at camp, I tied off the boat and dashed for the cook tent, slipping inside just as that dark grey cloud opened the flood gates. I realized how close my obsession with blueberries got me to a potentially hypothermic situation.
My obsession started to wane a bit when I got to 12 gallons. I managed to pick another gallon to tie with last summer, but I had slowed down. Work was picking up. It was time to stop and ship what I had home. Enough for one summer.
But barely a month passed from picking my 13th gallon at Pilot Station and arriving back in Talkeetna. Fall was well under way, the autumnal equinox passed by a few days before. First thing, I nervously inspected my cabin and surrounding land, relieved to find that everything was okay. With that weight off my shoulders I next inspected the blueberries. Sure, I had 13 gal. already, but one can never have too many blueberries! One of my favorite natural phenomenons of Talkeetna is how late the blueberries usually hang on, especially considering how early the flowers are out.
Blueberry inspection this year revealed that most of my favorite spots were completely bare, but then a surprise place revealed bushes still laden with firm, plump, good sized berries. Compared with Pilot Station this picking was phenomenal. I picked about half a gallon an hour, certainly not
record setting but pretty darn good for late September. I wondered what the picking would have been like 3 weeks ago. The bushes may have been laden but beneath them looked like someone had spilled their berry bucket. That would’ve been some really good picking! I reflect on the differences between the two types of berries I picked this summer. The berries at Pilot are more sour than sweet. But later in the picking season I eat the ones that have started to shrivel up. Those are
scrumptiously sweet, bursts of blueberry goodness. The berries in Talkeetna are more sweet than sour. But there can be a lot of variation between berries of different bushes. Sometimes I’ll taste one that makes me want to jump up and down and shout about it while others make me grimace and maybe spit them out. The safest thing to do, I’ve learned, is to eat them by the handful; if there’s a tasteless berry in there it will be drowned out by good ones. I have learned to avoid the shriveled ones.They usually taste insipid.
There’s more than one way to eat blueberries. Of course, you say, there’s blueberry pies, muffins, cakes, etc. Well, I say, you can eat that which also eats blueberries. While walking to my choice blueberry spot I came upon a grouse strutting about in front of me, his throat bulging with roundish objects, like a beanbag. I knew there must be blueberries in there and the best tasting grouse I’ve ever had are the ones that had been eating berries. My mouth watered, but I didn’t have my gun with me. Later that day I brought my .22 and, on the way to the good blueberries, I shot 2 grouse. Perfect, since a friend was coming. When I cleaned the birds, one had spruce needles in his crop and gizzard and was pooping the normal dry yellow green pellets. The other grouse had a crop full of blueberries. I counted 10 plump good sized berries. This grouse wasn’t settling for any soft, wilted berries. He was high grading; only the biggest, best firmest blueberries for him. Like me. I was tempted to rinse those berries and toss them down my own gullet, but didn’t quite have the nerve. I threw them in the broth instead. This grouse was like a blender. Add whole blueberries to one end and get blueberry puree out the other! The meat of the blueberry grouse was definitely lighter colored than the one that was eating spruce needles. When I roasted them up and tried each of them, the blueberry grouse was, hands down, the best tasting. Why the one grouse was eating mere spruce needles is a mystery.
In three afternoons of picking blueberries in Talkeetna I had about 6 gallons. When my friend came out we picked another couple gallons. The best part of all was partaking of this delicious harvest with a really good friend. Grouse noodle soup with fresh garden veggies, blueberry apple sauce for dessert, and a bottle of wine. We reflected on our summers and the recent stressful times she’d been through. There’s nothing like blueberries to bring people and nature together!
