Berry Picking:)

I find it to be a bit ironic that it took moving to Alaska for me to go cranberry picking for the first time, considering I’m from New Jersey, but at least I got to do it:) Berry picking is a huge to-do in the villages, but sadly Pilot Point hasn’t had a good berry season in a few years. I haven’t been able to get any berries our in PIP, so I was super excited when Kasie and I came upon another teacher picking cranberries earlier on our run. We stopped to talk and got a few berries, but decided to keep going with our run.

After dinner however, Kitza and her husband Michael took me out picking. Now it isn’t like cranberry bogs. Berry picking included walking through all sorts of sponge-like wooded land. I can’t really describe what it felt like to walk on the tundra other than that it was squishy and kind of bouncy. It was strange. I was also incredibly paranoid that a bear was tracking me, and I got nervous whenever I lost sight of my protectors. It was a ton of fun searching for the berries and we ended up getting a nice little cache of them. I am hoping to fill my bag more over the next few nights, and maybe even leave here with a gallon sized bag or more! Just another one of those things that I never thought I’d be doing, and it’s even better because I thought I had missed out on berry picking. A very successful Thursday if I say so myself:)

*Recipes for cranberries are welcome:)