My genteel Southern grandma usually protected herself from our northern summer sun with a large-brimmed straw hat, tied under her chin with a big, colorful bow. When the wild berries ripened, she switched to a no-nonsense seed cap. Leading the march to the ditches or neighbors’ old cow pasture, she’d make us pick for hours. After battling the heat and swarms of biting flies and mosquitoes, we’d bring home strawberries for shortcake and raspberries for I don’t even remember what. Neither delicacy seemed adequate payment for the blood we lost and the sweat that covered even my uncharacteristically disheveled granny before we were allowed to quit picking for the afternoon.

Blueberry picking never seemed as bad, maybe because I could wander off by myself in the lake-conditioned, shady woods of the islands. Maybe we didn’t do as much picking either, because the only blueberry items I remember eating were muffins made with a mix from a box, with a little tin of blueberries added in at the end.

I loved Granny and enjoyed learning from her, but I’ve always been grateful that I didn’t marry a male berry picking counterpart to her. As newlyweds, my husband and I never found a good blueberry patch, even though we searched the state land where most locals had their secret spots. A generous family took pity on us years later. I don’t recall picking any berries with them but do remember clambering over a lot of fallen trees as we followed.

After my scarred childhood and failed adult attempts to locate my own blueberry spot, I happily “picked” berries from my “patch” at the local grocery store. Each pint seemed a bargain at any price.

During one of my shopping trips after the births of our three children, I ran into a neighbor who raved about the blueberries that season. “You’ve got to go picking!” she demanded. “Berries are incredible in the burn!” Then she gave me a few pointers that made me believe I might actually find something.

We did: lots of scorched, fallen trees with huge berries among them almost everywhere my oldest daughter and I looked, due to the fire that ravaged the woods the year before. Her father and our dog accompanied us after that as we joined the caravans heading down the dusty dirt roads every summer around the dates of the annual county fair. Once we barely made it home from the patch in time to drop off our dog and pick up the other human members of our family. Changing on the fly, we showed up for our mini-stage performance with only minutes to spare.

Eventually the berries petered out, our secret patch was crushed while logged of the standing pines and discovered by others, making the distant drive no longer worth it as we realized the full truth of the phrase, “picked over.” I reverted to my store patch until the same neighbor protested, “This year they’re hardly ten minutes away!” She told me what road to take and advised, “Just pull over anywhere and look.”

My new patch contained many berries and poison ivy. While my intrepid oldest daughter would’ve picked anyway, she’d moved far from home to attend college, and others I brought with me rarely came back except under duress. Once he got going, my husband helped pick gallons of berries to freeze for winter, but when his face broke out in a raw, itchy rash, he also called it quits. I wore latex gloves, covered every inch of skin from my neck down, washed my clothing and showered after picking, applied generous splashes of Tecnu® as if it were water and never got a single pustule.

Our oldest, now a medical doctor, plans on making a quick visit home this fall from Florida. “Will there still be blueberries?” she wondered, homesick as we FaceTimed today.

“There weren’t even blueberries when there were supposed to be,” I huffed, not that we had time to pick this year anyway. We travel a fair amount now, often because of her, and didn’t get another dog after our old one died. At my insistence, her dad and I made a couple of forest forays to our usual spots around county fair time but found little reason to bend over and search for blue in the thick, grassy undergrowth. Our copious spring and summer rains wreaked havoc with pollination in our gardens and the woods. I’ve picked clusters with more than sixty blueberries; this year we found a couple berries here, a few there. Hardly a handful anywhere. We didn’t even bring home a half gallon between the two of us, but the bugs were unusually insistent and abundant. We made it to the mini-stage early.

My neighbor is a serious picker, with her own blueberry bag that she takes out to gaze at long before the berries ripen. I tote a bag sometimes, but only to carry necessities like picking clothes and repellent. Mine’s functional and random, not specific and decorated with an inspiring wraparound photo of blueberries and foliage. Although she also picked as a child, she recalls fonder memories than mine. After intense or repeated picking, I can close my eyes and still see berries on occasion. She dreams of them and can hardly wait until it’s time to go to the woods again. It’s her sylvan quiet place, but she doesn’t like going alone because of bears.

After seeing her blueberry bag and hearing her story when our family led praise at her church one Sunday, I brought her and another lady picking after church on a following Sunday. The bugs had mostly wound down for the year. My neighbor set off toward some ferns, in search of bluer picking. The other lady and I stayed close to the truck. Intent on filling her Cool Whip® container to share with another family, the lady picked until she’d achieved her goal. My neighbor returned from her reconnaissance to pick nearer to us. The cicadas droned in the still, pleasant air. We all sat on the cool, spongy ground as filtered sunbeams angled through the pines, each of us picking or eating in her own spot. Although none of us said much, we smiled a lot, rejoicing and being glad in the day the LORD had made. I ate plenty of berries but brought nothing home except the unforgettable memory of that afternoon.

The bushes are probably long bare by now, except for an occasional hard, shriveled berry. Still, if my oldest insists when she returns in a few weeks, I’ll go blueberry hunting. We may not find a single berry, but I hope we come home with something infinitely better.