Our Environment: "A Trek Through Cranberry Vines" by Scott Turner

Our Environment: "A Trek Through Cranberry Vines" by Scott Turner

Sunshine warmed our backs, as we raked the wiry cranberry vines with our fingers.

It was roughly 10 a.m. on a morning that started off at 32 degrees, with a visible frost covering yards and fields. Now we were in sweatshirts and ball caps, having trekked through a forest of tall trees, burning in rich fall color, to a sandy plain of cranberry plants.

Colorful characters in the woods included red maple, sugar maple, American beech, red oak, and black oak. The tallest trees were Eastern white pine, adding feathery green foliage to the mix of colors.

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Also common in the woods was shagbark hickory, a tree found in deep, fertile soil. We were in central Massachusetts, and of the handful of hickory species native to the state, shagbark grows the tallest. Some of the specimens along the trail were straight and stout, displaying bark that peeled in large, long curving plates.

Often on trip, we stepped on and over shagbark fruit, a rounded, thick, four-sectioned husk that holds an encased nut that is edible and tasty.

The understory featured a widespread of ferns. Some were green, but many were in a yellow-to-brown fall fade. Blueberry plants were abundant along the trail edge, their foliage a brilliant red-orange. More orange came from the leaves of scattered small sassafras trees.

Amidst this color, cacophony was the somewhat subdued yellowing leaves of witch hazel shrubs. That foliage framed a remarkable feature of witch hazel this time of year: tight-to-the-twig sprouts of fragrant bright yellow blossoms. Each cluster of these fall-blooming flowers consisted of four wrinkled, ribbon-shaped petals.

We found the cranberries growing atop a sandy stretch of open habitat that was water-soaked much of the year. While most of us use the words, cranberry, and bog together, this was not a bog in the traditional water-rich sense. It was not wet, nor spongy, when we visited.

Standing on the sand and gravel, I didn’t see a single cranberry. Our guide, who had harvested the site for years, suggested that we squat or crouch, or get on our hands and knees, and run our fingers through the stringy vines.

Well, what do you know? With gentle swipes of our hands, we began to feel and surface the little oval fruits. They came in a range of red from blush to currant. Some were even purple in color.

The vines grew among mats of soft, green star moss. At first, I crouched to collect cranberries, before getting on my hands and knees, while trying to avoid crushing the plant life. Amidst the vines and moss were scattered orange mushrooms and tufts of tan grass.

I didn’t need to move much in this miniature landscape to find fruit. In what first looked barren actually contained hundreds of cranberries.

Under a baby blue sky, we picked and plucked, standing every so often to stretch and enjoy the color. Unhurried, Karen and I gathered about two quarts, feeling relaxed and peaceful in the sun and sand.

The cranberries were crunchy and slightly tart, but lacking the sharp and sour taste of store-bought fruit.

Walking back through the forest was a chance to extend the zen-like experience, and to pop the occasional cranberry into our mouths in a tasty punctuation of a lovely late October morning in New England.

 

Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.