On Suburban Maryland Roads: Hunting for Berries, Bypassing 'World Famous' Strip Clubs, Suffering Poison Oak (On the Forehead), Finding a Fox Finding Me, Reflecting on the Addiction of the Finder's Joy, and Returning with the Booty

We were visiting my sister, Jennifer, from our home in Holyoke, and once we arrived, I  headed outside to have a look around. My sister and her family (a husband named Dave and a baby daughter named Bridget) live in a suburban neighborhood just outside of Baltimore, on a street shaped like an oxbow, a tiny teardrop of a road branching off of the Patapsco River.

Out back, there's a sump and along its edge a patch of woods where I guessed I might find some berries. Starting here, I quickly noticed one of my favorites, blackberries. It was a bit early in the season, so my son, Paddy, and I had to search up and down the thorned canes to find the darker berries. We did, picking several mouthfuls and then continuing our search.

Through a tiny path at the end of the street we headed, stepping over a steel culvert that directed a stream towards the river, and walking into a development of row houses. Here, we picked our way through bramble after bramble that framed the road, and not far ahead, we spotted low-growing bushes with light-green, oval leaves, and on the end of each branch, blueberries.

We paused, admiring our find. A low-bush blueberry is only a little bigger than a pea, so to get as much flavor as possible, we filled our palms with them before eating a handful. Cars slowed to watch the two grazers, and I got the sense they didn't know about all the wild fruit growing outside their doors. (Or, they were wondering about these two out-of-towners picking all their berries.)

Either way, their watching eyes didn't slow us down. Because once you start picking, it's hard to stop. It's an obsession that isn't just about the sweet reward. Before your tongue even bursts that perfect berry against "your palate fine," some other joy pops in your brain when you see the reward; this happens a moment before you pluck the berry from its vine, and it's this finder's joy that charges your search.  I suspect some ancient evolutionary response wants to keep us scavengers out there in the hot sun hour after sweaty hour hunting for food-- and the addiction works!

In fact, I was so intent on foraging that I not only ignored the nosy neighbors but I even missed the poison oak when its oily leaves brushed my forehead as I rooted through the berry bushes. Yes, I said "my forehead!" And by nightfall, blisters bubbled up, one pimply pocket at a time.

But all this came to pass much later. In the moment, under the sun, on the wood's edge, my son and I were in bliss. Happily we noshed. Eventually, we had to drag ourselves away from the blueberry patch and out towards other finds.

We headed up and out of the townhouses and onto a busy main road.

Across from us was an 84 Lumber and beside that, a storage facility and a do-it-yourself car wash. Stretching down the road was an occasionally-gapped wall of other one-story businesses: a recycling center, asking for brass, copper and aluminum, a restaurant called Beefalo Bob's with a flashing neon sign advertising karaoke night, a strip club with dark-mirrored windows (one shattered) calling itself The World Famous McDoogles, a bail bondsman offering "the lowest" interest rates and a little farther down, beside a tiny drawbridge, a marina peddling steamed Maryland crabs ("too pricey," my sister said) and a tiny one-room wings and sub shop (in a spot where "restaurants go to die"). Behind the stores was a backdrop of woods where two industrial smokestacks puffed out white clouds of steam. High-power lines stretched back to the smokestacks, making a greenway where one evening I spotted a red fox watching me.

Paddy and I walked a little ways and then turned off the main road and headed back towards my sister's, where we stopped at some abandoned buildings. "Check that out," I said. The white-stucco shacks were once summer bungalows. As my sister explained, many of the neighborhood's bungalows were long ago purchased by factory workers from Bethlehem Steel (at a time when the Patapsco River was polluted and river-front property was cheap) and they are now being purchased again, torn down and turned into million-dollar homes, squeezed onto tiny water-front plots on a river more pristine.

These three shacks sat in a line down to the river's edge. Their yards were overgrown with sumac and oak and another tree which had what looked like four-foot-long pole-beans hanging down. Vines wound tightly around the trunks. Green plants of various types--some blossoming yellow and white flowers--covered where grass once grew, and along the edge of the road were the last fruits of the day, mulberries.


I jumped and grabbed a tree branch, pulling the berries down to us and soon our fingertips were stained with the dark purple juice. After picking the lower branches clean, we stood under the tree, looking up at mature berries hanging from the higher branches. "I can climb it," my son said. Although he's only four, I didn't doubt him, and I considered giving him a boost to help him scale up to the enticing upper berries.

But I thought better of it and walked back to my sister's.