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July 29, 2005
Alaskan in Exile
by Neil Zawicki

    Recently, Beth and I went up to a place here in Oregon called Sauvie Island. Imagine a miniaturized Mat-Su Valley, surrounded by wide rivers. It was groovy. And I imagine it still is groovy, and will continue a modicum of grooviness when we return for another visit.

    I don’t want to fruit out over the whole thing, but a simple trip to a U-Pick blueberry farm revealed much about our planet.

    After getting our little white buckets from a genuine Head of an organic farmer, we began our journey into the rows of berry bushes. A few rows in, an older woman in a big sun hat showed us how to locate the best berries, and gently suggested where in the patch we should pick. I noticed other pickers, distributed evenly throughout the rows. Clearly, the sun-hatted woman was doing a fine job of “game management.” She was regulating the predation patterns, keeping the berry depletion balanced.
Soon, we were milling about, collecting perfect little blue orbs off branches, stopping once in a while to eat a couple, notice a ladybug, or just listen to the quiet rustle of hands on leaves.

    As I noted previously, it was groovy.

    I felt relaxed and connected to the natural order of things. The wind was up just a little, the sun was out, and we were out here, gathering food from plants.

    “Don’t you feel primal?” Beth asked me. Beth, by the way, is highly groovy.

    “I feel more sublime,” I replied lightly, from a few bushes over. “We’re absolute participants in nature, only our prey is happy, and even eager to accommodate us.”

    Beth continued: “Isn’t it funny how much we try to get away from nature, and then try and try to recreate it?” she said. “I mean, how many flowered couches are there?”

    I continued to pick, smiling at the groovy ways of Beth.

    “Really,” she added,” how many couches do you see with cell phones printed all over them?”

    By now, our buckets had a good amount of berries, and I looked around to see happy families and couples enjoying this simple activity.

    “This is how the world should be,” I thought to myself, dropping a plump berry into the bucket. Then it occurred to me that while we’re out here, in peaceful Oregon, gathering berries in the sun, there are people in the world blowing up busses, bombing resorts and trying to glue democracies together with bullets. But then it occurred to me that as long as this berry picking is happening, there is good in the world. Other berry pickers nearby had happy conversations. A man next to me wore a shirt that said, “One less Car.” I heard laughter a few rows over, and then kids’ voices rose up, calling to each other. Two of them met up in front of me, and as they hugged, one of the kids shouted, “I Love You!” at the top of his lungs.

    I was right in the middle of a utopian setting. I expected to find a lion grooming a baby lamb behind the next bush.

   Then, I heard rustling. It sounded like a sow Grizzly trudging through the bush. I looked up and saw a man in a beer T-shirt, with a backward baseball cap and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses. He began speaking gruffly to his wife and kids – the same kids who were hugging a few seconds ago.

    “Man, that lady in the hat didn’t know what she was talking about,” he blurted, “there’s no berries over there.”

     His wife and kids continued picking and laughing. He continued also: “Don’t pick green ones or red ones,” he commanded. “And pick one at a time, so you don’t get stems in the bucket. I don’t want to pay for stems after they weigh us out.”

     “Rick, you’re taking all the fun out of this,” his wife said casually. His kids continued picking, and giggling. He paced off into the rows, looking around restlessly.

     I could almost hear his thoughts: “Oh man, Nascar’s on TV today, and I don’t know why we didn’t just go to Safeway if we wanted blueberries…”

     No matter. He didn’t bother me; I pitied him instead. He just didn’t understand the value of the activity. And then I realized, just as the berry patch was a microcosm of the simple beauty of our world, so was this man a representation of the forces in our world that crash through our collective berry patch, assigning roles and rules, taking all the fun out of it. If we let them.

     Later, as Beth and I wheeled happily up the road, with bags full of blueberries, a big white SUV passed us briskly on the left. I recognized the driver as the impatient dad from the berry patch, and then I noticed his “Bush/Cheney ‘04” bumper sticker.
Big surprise. At least I was certain his kids had a groovy time.

  

Neil Zawicki, exiled Alaskan, is Editor at Large for Insurgent49, a former reporter for the Alaska Star, and winner of the Alaska Press Club's 'Best Columnist' award. He is now living out the rest of his days in an undisclosed location in Oregon. He can be contacted at -  neil@insurgent49.com
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





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Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All Rights Reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.