Strawberries

A couple of days ago I got to do the first big Strawberry harvest. I picked a lot of berries. I also ate a lot of berries. Thing is, there are times when you pick a berry and it is just this side of begin over ripe. It's not rotten, yet. But it also isn't quite hard enough to survive in the bowl under all the rest of the berries you are about to pick. The only option is to eat it. That's about as fresh as you can get. But it occurred to me that it is also a sublime wonder. Coming onto that berry just as it is about to cross the line toward rotting. The perfect juncture of time and sunlight and, well everything.

And sometimes they are amazing. Like, the best berry I have ever eaten. Like no other berry. And unshareable.

Thing is, there's no telling if the berry you are about to eat is going to be one of those amazing berries. It's not until you've eaten it that you know. So you can't say to someone, “Here. Taste this. It's going to be amazing.” Because it might not be. Sometimes these just this side of mush berries taste terrible, or bitter, or bland. You just have to pop it in your mouth and hope for the best. Even describing it to someone is impossible. It's one of those things you just have to experience yourself.

It got me thinking about other types of experiences that are the culmination of so many seemingly disparate events that come together to make something amazing. And how they can't be described. To say that a berry was amazing doesn't really get across what it was like to find and eat that berry. What it was really like. You just had to be me in that moment. Me, in the patch, finding that berry, then. It defies description, because a description is about now, not about then. Seems like the best way to honor that moment is to head out to the berry patch and see what happens next.