Paving Paradise and the Art of Blueberry Picking

They paved paradise. Well okay, they didn’t quite pave it yet, but I was stunned to see what used to be the Bardwell Farm on route 10 being rolled and flattened to become, I hear, a parking lot for a supermarket. I remember when we’d drive from Keene to Swanzey, past the property once home for many black and white cows. My kids would point and cheer, “The cows are out! The cows are out!!” They had names for the cows, too. “There’s Daddy and Mommy….and Maggie…look, there’s Nana and Lael”, they exclaimed from their back seat stations, giddy with excitement.

Dave Mallett’s song “Main Street”, Greg Brown’s “Boomtown”, and Iris Dement’s “Our Town”, in addition to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” all bemoan the changing landscape of our communities.

Another song that brings me pause is Greg Brown’s “Canned Goods”. He paints us a picture with smells of baking bread and the taste of pickles on our tongues with the picture of gram in her apron steaming up the kitchen windows while preserving summer in a mason jar.

As I was picking blueberries the other day I could hear my mom coaching me in the art of blueberry picking. “Gently roll the berry off the bush with this finger and your thumb. If it doesn’t roll off, it’s not ripe yet. Careful, careful…put your bucket right under the berries so you don’t lose them on the ground.” Then she’d smile, teasing, “one for your bucket, one for you.” It was really hard to put every berry in the pail, the luscious and juicy fruit staining my fingertips and teeth. Back in those days, I wasn’t really that interested in berry picking. It was hot. The bugs were biting. It required patience as the pail seemed to take forever to fill one berry at a time.

But now I’m so grateful to have had my mother’s coaching and for those days when the cows were out and the berry bushes loomed over me and my little berry pail. I’m grateful for the twirl and swirl of memories that fill all my senses like the smell of bread baking, the sounds of old songs and the images of black and white cows in a wide-open pasture.

Ours is not the first generation to watch our memories steam-rolled into the future. I’m reminded to savor those memories, just as I’ll savor the blueberry pie made from blueberries picked one blueberry at a time.