We awaken at 7a.m., have breakfast, play. At 8a.m., in long-sleeves, we go for a walk through our subdivision's dirt roads. It's about 2 miles and we don't meet a single car. It's bright. The skies are clear and blue, and it is a perfect 70 degrees. It's dry, but fresh. The air smells of white spruce trees, fireweed, and tundra grass. Light-pink flowered wild rose bushes, purple fireweed flowers, and red raspberries dominate the undergrowth. It's time to pick the berries.
I pick. My son eats. There are no woodticks, no snakes, no frogs, no bugs. Anything that survives the winter is big and slow, and these are mostly night-time mosquitos and the spruce beetles that eat the trees. We don't meet a single bug this morning.
Clapping at the sight of the berries
All in the mouth, none in the bucket
We eat again. Yummy. I am pleased by our simple life this morning.
