One Misty Maggie Morning

Maggie feels like a river stream on a hot summer's day — cool, calm, refreshing. She was raised on a sugar plantation in Louisiana and although she's been out West for years, her slight Southern cadence lingers just enough to feel lulled by it. I'm always grateful for her — for her sense of inquisitiveness, sense of adventure, and sense of authenticity. Conversation with Maggie always holds a piece of self-discovery for me.

One misty morning, Maggie invited Ted and I to go wild blackberry picking in the country on Moonshine Road, where she lives. She told us, "There's a great briar patch down the road. We have to do a little trespassing but it's all part of the fun of it." So after a cup of tea and a bit of catching up, we meandered up the road until we reached a barbed wire fence and a huge, sprawling briar patch beyond.




Taking turns holding open the wire for each other, Maggie heightened the thrill by telling us that if we saw cars along the driveway and the road, we should duck down and hide. "Oh, and by the way," she added, "there's a skunk family that lives at the bottom end of the briar patch, so watch out for them too."

Giggling like little kids, we began filling our Whole Foods Take-Out soup containers with berries. And true to the warning, we did smell skunk down a ways, but we were careful not to bother them, and continued picking and eating the squishier berries as we went.

Sneaking our contraband back through the barbed wire, we stopped down the road to sit on a bench overlooking the countryside. Maggie told us about a chicken farmer friend of hers and the state of egg farming in modern times - commercial, free-range and organic. A very long story I won't go into here, but I am consistently amazed by farming in general and how far away we've gotten from natural production. Commercial farming and the demands placed upon it by an ever-growing population is necessary, but do all the new (since mid-century or so) methods give us the best life-supporting food? Tons of books are written about this dilemma and as we pondered the concerns of egg production in our little corner of the world, I couldn't help but feel the preciousness of those natural little wild berries we had just picked. (And I couldn't wait to EAT them too!)

Well, Ted and I had to get back to work so we took our berries and waved good-bye to Maggie. It had been a very special morning and as the fog lifted, we just loved the sight of her waving back at us from the doorway of her little house on Moonshine Road.






Oh, and, this weekend, Ted combined those wild sweet-tart berries, with perfumey white nectarines from the local farmers' market. He topped them with a crumble of melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and oatmeal, making the BEST cobbler ever. Could it be, that our skunk-skirting, berry-poaching adventure added some special sweetness to that cobbler?