Closer to the Ground

by Dylan Tomine

  Surprisingly, Skyla doesn’t protest. She reels her line up by herself and bustles around the boat helping me put everything away, stopping only to peek into the fish box one more time. “Will Mom and Weston be home when we get there?” she asks. “Yes,” I say. “Good…I can’t wait to show them my fish and the seal pictures.”

  My tide calculations are not entirely correct. When we get to the ramp, it’s already out of the water, the end of the exposed concrete slab hanging a foot above the surface. This isn’t going to be easy. I back the trailer down and Skyla shouts when the wheels are at the very edge. I’m thinking we’re going to have to wait for the tide to come in when Smarty pulls up in his boat, ties it to the dock and jumps out to help. As we work to winch the boat up onto the trailer, he keeps glancing at me and then looking away. Strange. But we’re busy enough that I don’t pay it much attention.

  The minute we have the boat loaded and secured, Skyla runs up from the beach. “David!” she calls, “I caught a silver all by myself! Do you want to see it?” I lift the box over the bow and set it on the ground. She opens the lid with a flourish. “Wow! That’s a good one,” Smarty says. Skyla beams. Then Smarty looks at me again out of the corner of his eye and looks away when I notice.

  I strap the boat down, get Skyla another snack, climb into the car, and start driving across the parking lot. Smarty jogs ahead to open the gate for us, and stands aside as we pass through. When I slow down to thank him, he leans toward my open window and says, “Nice necklace, dude.” Fifty yards up the road I look in the rearview mirror and he’s still doubled over with laughter.

  Actually, I think it is a pretty nice necklace. Hell, it works. As long as you wear it on the outside.

  Tomorrow night, Skyla will whisk crushed garlic, dill, sea salt and a dash of lemon juice into olive oil to marinate the fillets. We’ll sear the fish in a hot pan to crisp the skin, then put it into a preheated oven for four more minutes. When it’s done, she will serve her fish to a gathering of relatives from the East Coast and bask in the glory of effusive praise and cleaned plates. She will show them pictures of her fish and a baby seal. And I don’t know who will be prouder, her or me.

  BLACKBERRIES

  Maybe it’s the early rain, which softened the ripe berries, or a hectic back-to-school schedule filled with soccer practice and swimming lessons, but our usual enthusiasm for blackberry picking is lagging this year. We just can’t seem to get going. The berries may be a little watery, but there are plenty of good ones mixed in, especially during the windows of sunny weather that open between storms. If we don’t get on it soon, we’ll kick ourselves in January, when frozen blackberries bring bright fall flavor to our muffins, yogurt, and oatmeal. And winter will surely feel longer and duller without a few blackberry crisps to lighten the mood.

  Actually, I know why we haven’t been out picking, but I’ve been slow to acknowledge it: We miss Grandma Karen. After a long illness, my stepmother passed away early this summer, and I guess it’s only hitting us now.

  Karen was the Blackberry Queen; at her insistence, she and my dad always timed their visits to be here at the peak of picking season. Even as her health declined, Karen harvested relentlessly, somehow finding the strength to fill baskets and bins long after everyone else had run out of steam. Then she would turn our kitchen counter into her production line, with blackberries moving along through separate sorting, rinsing, and drying stations. Finally, the berries went onto cookie sheets to freeze so they wouldn’t stick together, and once solid, we rolled them into freezer bags. Last year, Grandma Karen’s blackberries lasted us through February, and we thought of her every time we pulled a handful from the freezer. Berry picking without her just won’t feel right. But it’s something we need to get through.

  After an unusually heavy September rain last week, a high-pressure ridge over the Cascades brought us four days of warm, dry weather. This morning, we woke to foghorns bellowing from the shipping lanes and spooky, floating skeins of mist drifting through the trees. The ridge is breaking down, allowing more ocean air into the Sound each night. The satellite shows an ominous swirl of dense clouds over the Pacific shifting shoreward. This afternoon might be the last sunshine for a while, and even if the rain holds off, we understand the odds favor wet over dry from here on out.

  Everywhere around us, the sense of urgency grows: small, darting Douglas squirrels quit their summer chases to dig holes and store food; birds of all kinds gorge on blackberries, packing on fat for long journeys abroad or leaner times at home. Our Pacific flycatchers, their offspring grown, have abandoned the nest, and it sits empty in the awning above our deck. Last night, the evening air came alive with thousands of flying termites – Where are the flycatchers when you need them? – leaving the woods in search of new winter nests. If we’re going to pick blackberries, now is the time.

  There is no secret to finding blackberries on the Island. They’re everywhere. Most roads, including ours, suffer from the ever-encroaching Himalaya blackberry vines, which need to be beaten back on a weekly basis. Any untended open space is quickly covered in blackberry barbed wire; abandoned buildings collapse under the burden of vines. The invasive Himalayas have become a Western version of the South’s dreaded house-eating kudzu. Clearing these tenacious non-natives requires a light tractor at best and in extreme cases a diesel-powered implement of destruction called a chain-flailer, which is exactly what it sounds like. More recently, enterprising farmers have been renting out herds of goats to devour the pervasive brambles. With any method of control, though, there seems to be one simple truth: You can’t stop Himalayas; you can only hope to contain them. Luther Burbank, the pioneering horticulturist, made many great contributions to American agriculture, but the importing and release of a blackberry he called Himalaya Giant was not his finest hour.

  As the Himalayas flourish, our native, trailing-vine blackberries get tougher to come by each year. Like the Olympia oyster and native littleneck clam, they simply cannot compete with more aggressive, faster-growing imports. We rarely find enough of the small, tart, trailing-vine berries to make the effort worthwhile. There is, however, another, more desirable non-native species here. The cutleaf blackberry’s lacy, deeply serrated foliage is more beautiful, and its fragrant fruit tastier, than those of the Himalaya. Cutleaf berries are firmer when ripe, more resistant to rain, less prone to mold, and hold their shape better for freezing and baking. Their intense, tart-sweet flavor is also more complex and elegant. These are the berries Grandma Karen valued most.

  Cutleaf vines don’t fare much better than their native cousins when pitted against the potent Himalayas. Fortunately, a few cutleaf strongholds remain nearby. Our favorite patch lies in an open field bordering a small bay at the south end of the Island. The cut-leaf vines grow in haystack-sized clumps, evenly spaced throughout the grassy meadow, as though someone had planted them on purpose for harvest. A few Himalayas are creeping in along the roadside ditch, but for now, the open country belongs to cutleafs.

  The sun breaks through just as we arrive. Steam rises off the road. Our heavy jeans and sweatshirts, worn as protection against thorns, feel too hot within minutes.

  But serious blackberry harvesting requires hand-to-hand combat with the vines; picking in shorts and T-shirts would be a bloodbath. Better to sweat than bleed. We cross into the meadow, breathing humid air filled with the sweetness of ripe berries.

  Stacy and Skyla head to the far side, where a long hedgerow of cutleaf plants borders the bay. Weston and I make it about halfway across, then, following his lead, I veer toward the nearest clump of freestanding vines. “Ripe ones, Dad. See, look?” he says, dragging me by the hand toward his discovery. The world, or at least our awareness of it, shrinks to the vines, thorns, and berries directly in front of us, and we begin picking in earnest. An equal mix of green, moldy and ripe berries hang together in clumps, so we have to be selective. It’s slow going, but gradually my basket fills. As usual, there are bigger, more perfect berries
just beyond my reach. I remember telling Karen last year that we’d bring a ladder next time and really get after it.

  I can’t say my relationship with my stepmother was perfect. As kids, my brother and I spent the school year with our mom and summers with our dad and Karen. The transitions were never easy. We struggled with Karen over all the usual step-family issues, exacerbated by my teenage moodiness and the inevitable comparisons to our “real” mom. We wanted warm and fuzzy, and Karen seemed too critical and cool. But as we grew older, she softened – or maybe we did – and we began to see the efforts she made to reach out to us. Those efforts may have been there all along, but it took years for us to notice.

  Weston stands behind me pointing to berry clusters I can’t see from inside the “stickerbushes.” From time to time, when I glance down to drop another berry into my basket, I see a small hand grabbing a handful and withdrawing. The more I pick, the lighter my basket becomes. Eventually, he gets his fill and wanders off in search of berries low enough to pick by himself.

  “Dad,” Weston calls from the other side of the brambles, “I, I… need help.” I extricate myself from the snagging thorns, set my basket down and start looking for him. “I’m stuck,” he says when I find him. One thick, barbed stalk holds the back of his sweatshirt, and another grips his pants below both knees. Yet another is snarled in his hair. But none have pierced his skin. He’s scratched up a little, and currently immobilized, but not hurt. “What are you doing way back in here?” I ask while slowly and carefully pulling thorns from his clothes. He points upward and deeper into the thicket. “Look at those dandies,” he whispers.

  Dark purple stains cover his fingers, lips, and a good portion of his face. He has purple handprints smeared across the front of his sweatshirt and anywhere else he could reach. And yet his basket is empty. “Where are all your berries?” With great pride, he pats his belly, shrugs, and smiles.

  Fortunately for us, the girls picked up our slack. They have a whole flat of gorgeous, plump blackberries, plus another large basketful. The boys have Weston’s full stomach and purple hands, and the few berries he left in my basket. No thanks to us, the family has made a good haul. If the weather holds, we could still end up with enough berries to last through winter. Or maybe I will drag the ladder down here and really get after it. But for now, we’re happy to call it a day and proud of our – Stacy and Skyla’s, that is – harvest. Grandma Karen would approve.

  Tonight, I will call my mom and ask for her blackberry pie recipe. We’ll freeze most of what we picked, but something about Weston’s purple fingers has me thinking of the flaky, slightly salty crust and tangy filling I remember from my own childhood.

  I need to call my dad too. We’ve talked more over the past few months than we have since I was a kid, and I look forward to checking in with him every few days. Mostly we keep it light, chatting about the kids’ soccer games, his latest round of golf, or recipes for smoked salmon brine. Sometimes he helps me with long-distance advice on fixing the leaky skylight or troubleshooting my computer. It’s good for both of us. Today, I want to tell him about our blackberry picking, but I wonder if it might be painful for him to hear, or for me to say.

  We walk back to the car quietly. I’m not sure if the kids consciously miss their grandmother or if it’s more elusive than that, but I think we all feel better for having come out to pick today. And I know we’ll remember Grandma Karen whenever we drop frozen blackberries into our oatmeal or bake a crisp this winter. Maybe by then we’ll find it easier to talk about missing her.

  A faint sound, like barking dogs in the distance, breaks the silence. Canadian geese. We look toward the horizon, searching the open sky between tall cedars. And then, finally, a ragged wedge of tiny specks appears, pointed south toward the winter warmth of California rice fields. I am reminded of Ted Leeson’s brilliant observation that it is really we, the earthbound, who are moving, while geese “take to altitudes to stay in one place, not migrating, but hovering, while the equinoctial tilting of the earth rocks the poles back and forth beneath them.” As our northern hemisphere careens into winter shadows – taking us along with it – the geese remain forever the perfect distance from the sun. “Their seasonal appearance,” Leeson writes, “denotes your passing, not their own.”

  LIGHT IN THE FOREST

  Behold the world’s greatest mushroom hunter: Three feet, two inches tall. Agile. Enthusiastic. Energetic. Built to clamber over fallen logs and slide under brambles. Undaunted by steep terrain or dense brush. Ecstatic over mud, rain, puddles, and any opportunity to get dirty. Turns out, at three years old, Weston is the perfect chanterelle-picking partner.

  Monday morning, deep into the autumn rainy season. Skyla’s at school, Stacy’s in the shop building light fixtures, and Weston and I are discussing our plans for the day over breakfast.

  “We could play dinosaurs,” he says hopefully.

  “We play dinosaurs every day,” I say.

  “But you could be Tyrannosaurus rex this time,” he says, upping the ante.

  “Nah, let’s go do something new today,” I tell him.

  “We could play dinosaur wrestling, or do my dinosaur puzzle.”

  “Why don’t we take a little hike and see if we can find some chanterelles.”

  “Okay! Um…what are chantrulls?”

  Some years, after the first big autumn rains, we’re treated to a stretch of crisp, clear nights and warm, blue-sky days. Bigleaf maples bathe the woods behind our house in golden-yellow light, and the scent of late-ripening blackberries hangs in the air. Indian summer, when it happens here, feels like an extravagance, a gift we savor even more than the bright, overhead sun of high summer. But this is not one of those years.

  Instead, an endless procession of storms has lined up across the Pacific all the way to Hawaii. As they push toward us, a new front arrives with heavy rain and wind every two or three days and lasts pretty much until the next one. This will be a year when anything – firewood, life jackets, deck chair cushions – left outside in October won’t dry out until May. Mold spores throughout the region rejoice.

  The weather service is calling for a brief break between storms this morning. Which means it’s only going to drizzle for a few hours before the next downpour. As we put on our boots and rain gear, I tell Weston we’ll get off the trail and bust brush, searching for bright flashes of ruffled gold on the dark forest floor. “Will we find any?” he asks. I tell him I’m not sure, that they’re hard to see, that we’re going to a new place and you just never know. More expectation management. “It’ll be like a treasure hunt,” I say, “and we’ll just have fun searching around in the woods. Okay?”

  Just up the road from our house there’s a small piece of public forest that looks ideal for chanterelles. I’ve driven past it hundreds of times, but until recently I’ve never thought to check there. Maybe it just seems too close to home to be any good. When we drive into the small parking area, massive second-growth firs block the already muted October light, towering above a thick lower story of black huckleberry, salal, Oregon grape, and sword ferns. Very little alder, maple, or bracken fern. Perfect.

  More importantly, this section of forest has yet to be attacked by the rapidly spreading invasive weeds that are choking out native foliage all over the Island. English ivy and field bindweed – wild morning glory – strangle trees and outcompete natural ground cover in their race to dominate the woods. Japanese knotweed, with its giant leaves and savagely fast growth rate, shades and obliterates all other plants. The invaders come with beautiful names and destructive habits. Creeping buttercup, milk thistle, English holly, Queen Anne’s lace, herb Robert (also known as stinky Bob), and, of course, the ubiquitous Himalaya blackberry now cover our landscape. Some were imported by gardeners, others spread accidentally, but they’re all wreaking havoc on our forest ecosystems. Invasive plants are easy to ignore, too, until you return to a favorite old chanterelle spot, see ivy on the tree trunks, and know that the mushrooms are
gone. If Chief Se‘ahl could see the forest here today, I doubt he’d recognize it.

  But this little patch of woods seems perfect. The one thing I know for sure about chanterelles, though, is this: They only grow where it looks right, but not every place that looks right has chanterelles. Clearly, there are mysterious factors – soil chemistry, microclimates, drainage patterns – that determine chanterelle growth, yet remain invisible to me. Which is why I’m never sure I’m going to find any until I actually find them.

  I unbuckle Weston from his car seat and he hits the ground running. While I stuff a bag in my pocket, grab a water bottle, and make sure I’m loaded with snacks, he’s already scurrying through the underbrush around the gravel parking space. “Dad,” he calls from beneath a thick stand of salal, “I found one. I found a chantrull, come here.” It’s going to be a long day. “Come on, buddy, let’s go up the trail a ways and get farther in before we start looking,” I say. “No,” he says, “Come here first.”

  I breathe in deeply and hear myself let out a long sigh. “Weston, we’re still in the parking lot…come on.”

  “Dad, may I please…you come here?” He thinks I’m refusing to join him because he forgot his manners. Now that he’s used the magic word, I have no choice. I can see his boots, but the brush is so thick I can’t get to him. Another big sigh and I’m on my stomach, crawling to meet him. And there, in front of where he’s crouched, not 10 feet from the car, is a perfect, big, beautiful, golden chanterelle. Behind it, I see another, smaller crown poking up through the fir needles, and beyond that, several more.