Each In Its Own Time

Nature Moments, where I share photography + stories about moments of connection in nature, does not have a set publishing schedule right now. I’ve returned to full-time work, so I write when I can. In the meantime, please enjoy the archives, and also watch for shorter musings on Substack Notes :)

When you go and lose yourself in nature for a moment, nature teaches you something about itself - and also something about life.

I really like picking blueberries. I mean, on a small scale, just the few little patches of wild blueberries that we disentangled from the untamed meadows reclaiming our abandoned home site, and a handful of high bush blueberries that we added safely inside a garden fence.

My favorite thing about picking blueberries is watching the way that they ripen, the artisanal progression from seaglass green to blushing rose to blazing magenta to twilight blue.

Watching for the unexpected splashes of turquoise and the silvery bloom that brushes away with a careless fingertip.

What I find endlessly fascinating is that berries in the same cluster ripen on wildly different schedules. That’s what makes the practice of picking berries for your own personal use so deeply meditative. Carefully plucking one ripe berry from one cluster after another, while leaving all of the neighboring jewels intact for some unknown future day.

I did a little rabbit-hole research about blueberry ripening, of course, and immediately stumbled across this delightfully wry display of academic humility:

Blueberry (Vaccinium spp. section Cyanococcus) ripening is a complex process involving physiological and molecular changes that affect harvest timing, fruit quality, and market value…While these mechanisms have been studied across different blueberry genotypes and species, varying results limit a comprehensive understanding of blueberry ripening.1

There are many varieties of blueberries, each with many variables in ripening, and a perplexing tendency to act in unexpected ways during attempts to quantify them. To put it another way, nature is complex beyond our ability to capture in a tidy chart 😆

And, I mean, fair. I kind of thought that was going to be the case. Because I have sat mesmerized and watched the busy bees work meticulously through every single blossom in a cluster. They seem to have all been pollinated at basically the same time. And yet, on the same branch, at the same node, with all the same conditions, each berry still ripens individually in its own time. Everything visible appears the same. Something hidden is making a difference.

Everything visible appears the same. Something hidden is making a difference.

There is wisdom in the blueberries, and they will share it with you when you sit with them for a just few amazing moments…🫐🌿

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