For the birds

Raspberries are great and everybody loves strawberries. Blueberries are a bit bland but delicious too. Huckleberries and salmonberries are also local favorites. BUT, for that real ecstatic black purple juice jolt that hits those atavistic hunter-gatherer genes where they live, nothing beats wild blackberries. So sweet, so tart, and so difficult to pick. As well as a bag of berries, an afternoon's picking is likely to leave you with numerous small punctures and scratches. In fact, the biggest, most luscious berries, like the one above, always grow in the middle of the patch. You can see them but the tangle of thorny brambles makes it impossible to reach them without serious blood loss. It's OK - they're for the birds.