DALLAS WHEATLEY
I was raised sharing black raspberries on hot summer days with anybody who wanted them.
I grew up surrounded by animals. My neighbors raised cattle, my family kept cats and dogs, we chased squirrels out of our barn and watched black snakes sun themselves in the road on a hot day. Bears would visit our trees during the dry season. And we all feasted on raspberries.
I miss the simplicity of sitting beneath the shade of a cherry blossom tree, feasting on sun baked black raspberries, and watching the birds find materials for their nests in the hay field next door.
I miss sharing them with my dog, who loved to pluck them from the thorny bush herself. Pruning the shoots away so I could still be outside in bare feet, feeling the grass between my toes. Watching the deer lick dew from the verdant blades in the early morning mist.
We always had too many berries, and though it plagued my parents, I loved being able to share them with the local wildlife. They were ours, not mine.
The bushes became sacred. You left technology aside while attending them. You picked the fruit for yourself. We never once collected them to sell or freeze, because they were best when eaten immediately. What we left, we left for the animals.
I now make smoothies from frozen raspberries grown on a commercial farm based in Maine. They're tart and underripe, nothing like the perfect specimens I was raised on -- berries that would burst in your fingers if you pinched them too tightly, turning your nails purple as a mark of your viciousness. I know better than to share these sour red stones with the world around me. They're just a shadow of the ones I grew up loving, a reminder of a memory long gone.
Giving those berries to the deer or birds outside my apartment would be an insult to not only them, but how I was raised. We deserve to share the fruit we harvest ourselves, the bushes growing in rocky clay soil at the base of an ancient mountain as we greet each other from afar.
I never once called animal control at my old home in Appalachia. Those animals lived there just as I did, and we fed on the same fruits in the same seasons. But years later, when a bat got into my apartment in the middle of a busy town, I felt afraid -- not for me, but for the bat.
Why was such a small thing trapped in my apartment, so far from where it should be living? Was it hurt? Sick? Too young to know any better? Or simply lost? And then I worried for my rabbit -- if the bat is sick, will it make my rabbit sick? How do I get the bat out without catching some illness myself?
The more time I spend away from nature, the more afraid I become of what used to comfort me. I grew up around animals, both wild and domestic, and never once felt fear for my safety. But now, a single tiny bat can send me spiraling. And it haunts me, knowing that I will not outlive my grief of what I have lost.
I was raised sharing black raspberries on hot summer days with anybody who wanted them. But those bushes are now gone -- uprooted by my own parents who considered them a nuisance -- and the animals have hidden themselves away. I am still searching for them as I have searched for myself: quietly sipping at a raspberry smoothie.
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