Karen Wils photo Blueberry picking in modern days means recycled plastic buckets of berries

Karen Rose Wils

ESCANABA — Time travel is possible in Upper Michigan in the summertime.

You can escape the stress. Hurried, hectic days of tight schedules, phone calls and appointments can melt away into the warm sunshine.

If you go blueberry picking.

Not only will the clock stand still while you wander beneath the shady jack pines, but decades will disappear in the mid-summer’s heat.

How far back do you want to go?

Maybe two hundred or more years back and pick blueberries in moccasin feet? The ripe wild berries make a thunking sound as they are tossed into birch bark containers.

Blueberries are such an important food that native tribes spent hours in blueberry country to stock up on this precious fruit. A good blueberry harvest meant a good winter survival rate. The berries were very nutritious fresh, dried and pounded into pemican (animal tallow) to make a jerky-like food.

Maybe you only want to go back as far as great grandmother’s days. Jump in the back of an old Ford Model A pickup truck along with your brothers, sisters and cousins.

Head down Stonington Peninsula in the early morning with a picnic basket lunch and many tin pails to fill up with berries. The humid air smells of sweet ferns, sand and blueberries. Muffled voices drift off over the plains, “Hey everybody over here by this log. They are huge.”

Later, back at the homestead, the whole family pitched in to clean berries. The old wood cook stove is fired up so that grandma can preserve some berries in glass-lidded Mason jars and some are baked into a pie.

Time travel is fun. The scents and sounds of yesterday can be easily triggered.

We could go back to the 1970s and there I’d be dragging my bell-bottomed jeans through the thicket with our terrier dog Spot. Dad would be up head scouting for a “good” patch. Mom loved picking wild berries and would continue for hours. Every once and a while Dad would take head count to make sure all six of us kids plus Mom were there.

Once you get “off the beaten path” for a while time slows down. You notice the bird’s songs and the way the gentle breezes talk in the pine trees. The truck, radio, cell phones and civilization are miles away. You cannot tell if it is 2025 or 1905.

There is peace in the air.

To help you travel back in time, you should read (or reread) “Blueberries for Sal” by Robert McCloskey. This children’s classic was written in 1948. His illustrations are wonderful and will take you back in time. (except for the mom wearing a skirt while picking berries. I don’t think that ever happened in the U.P.)

So, grab a pail and some water bottles and head out over blueberry hill. Even if you don’t find tons of berries, you’ll come back refreshed.