Navigating Abundance

We live in an age of extravagance. Learning to be content with abundance is the antidote we need.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

It is blackberry season here in the ‘Land of Eternal Sunshine’ (the ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek name I give to my home county of Essex, England). The berries in the Non-Conformist cemetery behind our house are already shrivelled up — casualties of the relentless and scorching “Indian Summer” England has been basking in — but a few miles away on the Common land I visited last week, the berries were only just ripening. These wild bramble bushes laden with scarlet berries which will soon become black, juicy, and ready for harvesting. Now is the time of year when nature’s abundance is on full and glorious display. It is an abundance for all to enjoy without exclusion: rich or poor, young or old, native or foreigner — for nature does not discriminate.

It is an abundance, though, that increasingly seems to be going to waste.

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It was once an annual tradition for many of us on both sides of the “Pond” to go blackberry picking in the late summer. Our earliest memories of this event probably consist of us as a child clutching a basket beside our grandmother, watching as she quickly and deftly gleaned the bushes of their goodness while ignoring the scratches and cuts that were rapidly populating her bare arms. At the end of the afternoon, the reward of a sweaty few hours labouring under the sun was a basket (or two) full to the brim of rich, juicy, sun-ripened blackberries that would be made into jams, crumbles, and syrups when we returned home.

Later on in life, many of us have continued the late summer tradition that we inherited by taking our own children out to the lanes, glades, and fields to forage for nature’s bounty and to rekindle those precious childhood memories. It is an abundance we make sure not to miss.

Sadly, though, in the modern technological — and increasingly virtual — age most of us now inhabit, many of the bushes laden with rich goodness around us goodness remain unpicked, their fruit shrivelling up or rotting away as we pass (or drive) on by. Children sit at home aimlessly playing video games instead of playing outside and foraging for sweet treats, and increasingly harried parents — juggling too many responsibilities — find little time to take their screen addicted children into the great outdoors. Unpicked, and unnoticed, the berries rot on the bushes.

It is not only blackberries that go to waste; everyday we walk or drive past wild foods our ancestors would have made ready and proficient use of: wild garlic, sloe, hedge mustard, crab apple, and more. Foods that for our want of knowing their names and our lack of identification skills, go unwanted, ignored, and uneaten in this age of extravagant waste.