You Can Be My Huckleberry

The Stories We Tell Shape Our Lives

Today is the first day the clouds have touched the ground in a long while. The never ending summer well into October has been a gift- but the fires.  The fires.  I am relishing the quietude and the mist wrapping itself around my body saying “lean in here, rest, come down closer to Earth, let go”.  

Each day I walk the same path from my little cottage down to the beach and observe the subtle shifts in the natural world around me. Typically this time of year the blackberries would be far gone from the vine.  Shriveled or soaked and soggy.  But this year their song lingers longer in the endless summer. I pay mind to stop and eat a few. There is this one patch that has the largest blackberries I’ve ever seen, so swollen with life, and I hear them laugh as I turn 5 in front of their purple eyes and bring something alive, giggle with gratitude. I feed something that can never die.  

My mother taught me young about berries.  What to eat, what not to eat.  Poison berries.  Yummy berries.   I remember little birds crashing into the big picture windows of our home that stared up at Rattlesnake Ridge as it handed down, with its gray, heavy hand, all the trapped clouds as they rumbled over the mountain pass.  She would always say “those birds must have eaten some of those poison berries ;)”.   I would be so sad.  How did those birds not know?  Did they not have a mother who taught them about the berries? 

Very young she introduced me to how the wild provides, but not all is meant to be consumed by humans, yet everything is working with us- for us- with us.  Listen.  Watch.  She taught me to see beauty in everything.   Mother knows how to plant seeds.  

In the summers we were sent out to pick various berries for winter pies.  Wild Blackberry bramble was one of the only gifts the loggers left behind in the crying wide open clearcuts - and the purple Fireweed fluff I fell in love with so young.   The Wild always working towards beauty and balance.

 Now as I walk by I hear the Blackberries say- “we are sad for the people who can no longer see that there is still nourishment here.”   As they dance and glisten with a different story than what the fires are spewing forth into the air.  But what does the fire really want to say?  Does anyone really listen to its blaze?  We, humans- beautiful busy humans- love to talk for things.  We love to spin stories without first gathering the seeds that tell tales of how all things grow.  

If we sit with desolation long enough we would see a miracle appear, and the little sprout of truth floating up from the Fireweed seed could maybe help rewrite our stories based in fear.  If we set our perceptions down at the feet of the bramble we beat back so fervently another passion may emerge.  A passion for loving rather than saving.  A desire for trusting rather than controlling, fixing, fighting.  

You see the cliche is true, what we resist persists.  The stories we weave wind into the wombs and the children are born with the burden of untying twisted tongues.  

Mothers teach your children about berries.  As the heat moves further into our October days and the fires set aglow our autumn nights, they will need to be able to hear the song of the Blackberry:

“There is still more nourishment here than fear.   Feed yourself from Mother’s seeds and all things grow.”  

And if they can’t see the sweet jewels dangling on the vine because their mothers were led blind and astray from their own ripening, then pray.  Pray that the children grow their eyes to see that the path they seek is inside the bramble and untangles itself when they reach in and remember the sweet taste of Her.  Then that thorn in our side becomes what guides when we loosen up our grip on fear, meaning the stories we tell in our minds, and instead move from Love.  

But first we must regrow our own eyes to see a story blossoming forth opportunity rather than some fated destiny that defies Life’s wisdom.  There is nothing to fix. There is nothing to fight.  Your world shapes itself according to the rhythms that play the most in your mind.  If you can’t imagine an old Blackberry song feeding your life then come on a walk with me. 

There are always two stories.  One where the fires are burning and destroying our lives and one that tells of a regenerative force still feeding and growing and providing nourishment for new life.  Does choosing the latter put out the burning fear of the other?  Love can do anything it sets its heart to.  

This is how I see the world.  I see berries ripening on the vines twisted in fear behind so many eyes.  I see the blossoming of something that is forever seeking beauty.  Because I choose to see the dream of life within me reflected by the wild that never ceases to feed. And then my life becomes that dream and therefore a seed that births our life story.  Our love story.  You can be my huckleberry.  ;)

Mary Oliver said it best as she so often did:

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house of 

reasons and proofs. 

The world I live in and believe in 

is wider than that.  And anyway,

what‘s wrong with MAYBE?

You wouldn’t believe what once or 

twice I have seen.  I’ll just 

tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

ever, possibly, see one.

~Mary Oliver