The First Blueberry

I found this little fruit while exploring the woods in my new neighborhood, the Assabet Watershed.

I recognized the familiar, breezy structure of the bush before I noticed the actual berries. Once I did, this one caught my eye, probably because all of the others were still green. That makes it the first blueberry of summer, precisely one week after the solstice. Of course I picked it, and ate it.

How was it? A little sour, to be honest. Could have used another day of sun to fully ripen. But the temptation of eating even so slight a morsel such as this was too much to stay my hand. There is nothing like eating something that has nothing to do with humanity. A human didn't grow this bush. No one planted it or fertilized it. Our species hadn't bred it to bear enormous fruits or to withstand being shipped from far away places. It was just a plant in the woods, and I reached out and plucked its only ripe fruit, and thereby closed the shortest link on the food chain: bush to mouth.