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It was in the middle of the afternoon on my day off and I had decided that it was time to get out and pick some salmon berries before they rotted off the bushes. There are salmon berries growing around my house that tell me when my good spots on other parts of the island are ready to harvest. Today was going to have to be the day. My friend and favorite partner in crime, J. R., called just as I was getting ready to go out. "Hey," she asked me, "do you want to go berry picking?" "You have perfect timing," I told her, "you caught me on the way out the door to do just that." J. R. has two children who are energetic to say the least. Fortunately they are good kids, because obedience is not a strong point with the two boys. If they were evil-tempered, my nickname for them, the demon spawn, would be quickly earned much to the detriment of the entire planet. But most of their mischief is confined to setting track records in grocery store aisles and other miscellaneous ways that children have of burning off energy. The demon spawn were coming with us to pick berries and right from the start of the trip I had to start yelling at them-- theoretically in the hopes of making them behave. Berry picking on Unalaska Island is a perilous adventure at best. The bushes conspicuously choose slippery and treacherously steep hillsides on which to grow. Salmon berries are similar to blackberries in shape, but rather than create long trailing growths of thorn-infested vines they grow upright like raspberry bushes. However, the thorns are much larger and more painful. I took my friend and offspring out to the old Delta bunkhouse which is haunted. (But that is another story.) People seldom go out that way and there is a huge patch of berry bushes behind the building. Our first attempts at harvesting the bunkhouse berries resulted in multiple skids down the hillside while trying to cling to vegetation that refused to support our weight. I had the foresight to wear thick sweat pants which saved my rear end from an infestation of thorns. After getting smacked and stabbed by hostile bushes, falling and sliding around on thorny branches and basically getting beat up by vegetation, I began to understand the true meaning of "ambush." Somewhere on this planet there are or were "amberries" and they aren't any more amenable to human harvesters than salmon berries are. Some ancient person had suffered my current woes in times beyond remembrance, leaving only a lingual anachronism to warn the ignorant of their impending peril. All along the bottom of the hill were piles of old trawler nets. When we moved onto these piles of webbing, life and berry picking changed dramatically for the better. I had already warned the demon spawn off from my bucket of berries, but their mother, failing in my understanding of the true capacity of children to invoke the laws of Murphy, did not take the same precaution. While I picked berries the children played around their mother's bucket as she filled a smaller container among the bushes. I kept hearing the younger boy yell, "Demmo wams, the demmo wams are gonna get me!" Finally I couldn't take it any more. I had to turn around and ask the boys what they were talking about. "You know, temma warms!" he exclaimed, "those big things that come out of the ground and eat people!" At last it all made sense. They were pretending that the "grabboids" from the movie Tremors were trying to get them. They had watched the movie about 40 times until their mother begged me to take the video back. She had all she could take of "tremor worms" and never wanted to see or hear about them again. Having acquired this information I realized it was time to move the van down to the other end of the bunkhouse and picked up my bucket to carry with me. As I walked along I noticed there were berries all over the ground and wondered if the kids had been picking them and throwing them around, or taking them from their mother's bucket? "Hey!" I yelled, "Have you kids been playing with berries? Where did all these berries come from?" "Look out!" they yelled, "Don't step on the berries or the tremor worms will get you!" There is a little white moth that lays eggs on the salmon berries and the kids had been finding the caterpillars of that moth among the berries. Instead of throwing the worms away they had been chucking out the entire berry. When J. R. found this out she briefly roared, but being a mother with the duty of continuous childcare around the clock, she didn't expend too much energy on her outrage. Afterall, her offspring would afford her so many opportunities in any given day she had to pace herself in such matters. "Hey you boys!" I yelled after J. R. was finished, "Haven't I ever told you that you never throw the worms away? That's how you get a complete meal when you eat berries! The worms are extra protein!" Their mother chimed in with, "Yeah, that's extra protein! Groceries aren't cheap, ya know?" When all was said and done I had enough berries for two gallons of juice. My hair was full of juice from overripe berries and it sported twigs, leaves, bugs and tremor worms. My arms were all scraped up from fingertips to elbows and my clothes were stained everywhere. I could feel my muscles beginning to complain from being used harshly to climb and cling on perilous slopes. I felt completely relaxed after having yelled at kids all afternoon, and for all the pains and injuries suffered, I can say I had a good time. I am not entirely sure why, but I am sure it involves some deep-seated need to punish myself for nebulous crimes that wouldn't make any sense if exposed to the light of reason. But who says you have to be sane to pick berries in Alaska?
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