You push your way into the thicket of vines just a little farther, stretching toward that big clump of perfect berries. They squish a little as you pull them off the vine, and scarlet juice streaks your arms. You don't even care when the thorns leave a network of thin red scratches on your skin. They cling to your clothes and snag your hair, but you just keep reaching further. You are blackberry picking; a few thorns cannot deter you.

The spiders do deter you, sometimes; the big ones whose webs always seem to be stretched right across the choicest clusters of fruit. The smaller ones you ignore, carelessly flicking their webs away. Likewise, you have nothing to fear from the honeybees bumbling their way from blossom to blossom. Yellowjackets gorging themselves on berry juice are another matter--they can turn mean in August, so you steer clear of them.

You know that if you're going to get enough for a pie, you can't eat all the berries. But sometimes, you just can't resist. Some of them swell to obscene proportions, all rotund ripeness with a sweet, milky taste when they burst inside your mouth. The smaller ones are firmer, tart and tangy. You want some of both for a good pie.

The sun is so bright today that it makes the hair on top of your head hot to the touch. Sweat tickles the back of your neck. Why didn't you get up and do this first thing in the morning, when the day was still cool? You eyeball the mound of purply-black berries in the Tupperware container you've brought along, trying to picture them coated with flour and sugar and dumped into a pie plate. Is that enough?

When you've picked all that you can reach (there are always dozens of perfect berries growing far beyond your grasp, stretching upward to the sun), you walk home and dump the berries into a colander into the sink, rinsing them and picking out all the little stems and leaves and stray insects that have made their way home with you. While the berries drain, you mix the dough from your mother's recipe, which you've made so many times you know it by heart and could probably recite it like a favorite poem: Four cups of flour, a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of baking powder...

You toss a handful of flour onto the counter and rub another handful across the smooth wood of your rolling pin. You give the lump of dough a good thump with the heel of your hand before you set to work, flattening it into an ever-thinner, vaguely circular shape. Then the quick countertop juggling trick of transferring the dough to your pie plate; quickly rolling and unrolling the round of dough, working gingerly to avoid tearing the delicate pastry.



You toss the berries with flour and sugar and dump them into the dough-lined plate, their purple juices already seeping out of them. Another round of dough-rolling, then you carefully pinch the edges of the pie between your thumb and fingers, sealing the berry goodness inside (even though you know some will bubble up during baking no matter what you do). Prick the top crust and let it bake.

Having the oven on during the middle of the day in August pushes your already-hot kitchen right over the line into stifling, but you don't care. Nothing smells sweeter than a baking pie, made from berries that were growing on the vine an hour ago.

Scratches on your arms, juice on your clothes, sweat down your back, excessive heat in your house--they don't matter. Fresh blackberry pie is worth it.