Ridin', Reinin' and Writin'

Two women, black dog scampering at their side and berry pails in hand, walk toward the setting sun along an old trail flanked by brush and trees. Mosquitoes and black flies buzzing around their heads, feet occasionally tangling in the tall grass bent over the seldom-used path, they trudge on with one purpose – to harvest the wild berries growing on both sides of the trail before the bears do. A whimsical glimpse into the past? A scene out of a pioneer movie? Nope - not another century or a movie. Just Crystal and I in search of saskatoon berries.

But that old fashioned scene is what came to mind as we made our way through tall grass, rose bushes and weeds. I chuckled. “A vision just popped into my head,” I said to Crystal, “Of women in long dresses and bonnets with lard pails in their hands walking down this trail a hundred years ago!”

I’m sure we were, literally, following in the footsteps of pioneer women picking saskatoon berries along this same trail. But instead of long calico dresses, we wore blue jeans; instead of bonnets we wore ball caps; instead of lard pails, we carried plastic ice cream buckets. Behind us, though, Chilco Ranch stood as it had for almost a century. Below us the Chilcotin River ran just as swift and just as beautiful. And on either side of this old trail saskatoon bushes still offered fruit to those who came for it.

I have a long-standing love for saskatoons. Since I was born and raised in Saskatchewan, I was introduced to the delicious berry at a young age. Saskatoons were readily available – and free for the taking – so all the women picked and canned as many quarts as they could for winter fruit. How I loved canned saskatoons. One of my most poignant memories (and I don’t know why this is so real to me today) is of my grandmother setting dishes of saskatoons with a dab of fresh cream floating in the middle in front of my brother and I at her table in her kitchen at Elbow! (It's odd how random memories stay with us... I remember almost nothing of grandma and grandpa at their Elbow home.) Of course in those years there were no freezers so my grandmother and my mother canned as many quarts as they could, only using fresh berries for a few pies or dished up with sugar and cream.

At the Diamond Dot Ranch, where I was raised, most of the sasktoons grew in the coulees. One coulee, in particular, was the first place we headed to pick. Grandma’s Coulee (named not for my grandmother but for my mother’s grandmother) had the best and most berries.

My husband, too, had many stories of saskatoons. What he remembers is picking gallons of them and selling them for 25 cents/quart to buy shoes for school. Since he had ten siblings, that was a lot of saskatoons!

I picked saskatoons (and other wild berries as well!) and canned or froze them every year when I lived in Saskatchewan but when I moved to BC, I could not find any in the Okanagan. Here, in the Chilcotin, I am back in saskatoon land – if the year is good for them (which often it is not) and if I can beat the bears to them. This year, with all the rain, they are plentiful and I have picked three times. The last two times I rode Whisper to the bottom land by the river, ice cream pail in hand, picked it full with the reins looped over my arm, and carried the pail home on horseback. I can imagine children doing much the same a century ago – only they probably rode bareback. Maybe things haven'e changed as much as I thought...

Saskatoons that I picked yesterday by the Chilcotin River

I’m pretty sure, though, in this day and age, that only a few pick wild berries anymore, and they are missing something - the peace of the wilderness, the feeling of getting back to nature and the satisfaction of adding to the larder with no cost! Most of all, those berries still taste just as good as they did when I was a child. Berry, berry good…