Blackberries, Rain, and Led Zeppelin

I just finished my tasty and delectable treat of raspberries and blackberries for my mid-morning snack. Yummy! Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” plays in the background as the rain continues yet again another day here in Northern California. While eating my berries and listening to Led Zeppelin, I’m plucked right out of 2009 and thrown back in time.

It’s the mid to late 70’s and KISW - Seattle's Best Rock! is playing Led Zeppelin's “No Quarter”. It is early March in Maple Valley and it is raining again, a daily Western Washington weather occurrence during that time of year. Across Maple Valley Highway and the train tracks is one of my favorite places…the Cedar River. I would go there to sort things out in my head and mellow out when things in my world got intense. For a high school teenager, that intensity consisted of a boy not calling me as I had hoped he would, my mom and/or dad not letting me go out on a Friday or Saturday night, or an unresolved argument with a good friend at high school. I would escape to the river and get completely lost as I watched the rippling water travel the course of its natural flow as I tried to find the natural flow within me.

The blackberry bushes…(sighing)…the blackberry bushes were everywhere. If you could manage the poke of thorns while you tried to immerse yourself deep into the bushes to pick every single last one of the berries, the prize would be well worth each prickly effort. Plump, fresh, fully ripened, delicious blackberries. They were everywhere. Crawling up the rising banks of the Cedar River. On a hillside near one of my high school friend’s house. Anywhere along Maple Valley Highway. Near the train tressle.

Wild blackberries grew in abundance...everywhere.

Fresh blackberries.

FREE blackberries.

Even though I was an accomplished know-it-all at that age (sarcastically stated), the one thing I didn’t know was that fresh blackberries do not grow everywhere. I also didn't know that if I were find a bush later in life, such as 2009, I wouldn't dare touch it as there is no way of knowing what chemicals have been sprayed on the berry bushes to keep the various danger imposing insects and bees away. And I never dreamt I would actually pay money in a grocery store for berries that, while growing up, were so readily available, to the point that most people actually cut down their blackberry bushes in an attempt to contain the out of control and overgrowing foliage.

Flash forward to reality...right now…this moment…I close my eyes and as “No Quarter” ends, I lick my lips trying to find one last taste of blackberries.

(NOTE TO SELF: Buy more blackberries...and...do not take the simple things in life for granted)