Cooking berries in a rusted can

I really make an effort this time of the year to absorb all that's going on for it's a smorgasbord of the senses-just as it was when growing up in the country. When I hear the geese flying overhead I remember back to those times we'd be playing at the creek as fall was thinking about turning into winter. Making fortresses along that creek's bed by building walls of leaves all around us, we were able to see up and down that murky waterway just in
case an enemy approached. Don't tell any grown-ups but one time intent in play we picked lots of berries of some sorts; then put them in a rusty old can full of creek water and built up leaves underneath and around the can;then we lit the leaves on fire. (I really can't remember who had the matches)! It fit right into the script of what was going on-surviving in an unknown territory or something like that.

So our leaf fire quickly turned to smoke-lots of smoke. My two cousins were scoping the nearby field for twigs and when they returned they asked me if the berries were ready. Guess we were thinking of eating them?
Anyway I remember the next second as clear today as if it was yesterday. I was sitting cross-legged stirring our "supper' with my eyes shut and tears streaming down my cheeks. Smoke had taken over but I was sticking it out. After all we were on some foreign soil and needed to survive by any means-even if it meant eating berries-maybe. I looked up-still with my smoke-filled eyes shut-and said, "I don't know. I can't see!"

And then the three of us lost it on the banks of Sucker Creek. For some unknown reason we found my answer funny-really funny. One of those moments when you laugh so out of control and when you look back you wonder what was so funny. Well we thought this was so, so funny that it turned into rolling around in that field funny! We laughed so hard we couldn't breathe, lying there with the geese flying by. It was a moment of pure childhood-pure spontaneous childhood.

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 15, 2010 at 4:16 PM

    what fun you had in those days.....seems like kids never even think of being explorers or adventurers anymore....i wonder why????

    ReplyDelete
  2. BarbaraNovember 15, 2010 at 6:06 PM

    So glad you enjoyed the post. Maybe kids don't think that way anymore because of all the technology at their fingertips and all the extra activities they sign up for-when our activities were never ending-right outside the back door.
    Thanks for the comment.
    Barbara

    ReplyDelete

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