The Dewberries

This is the recipe for the dewberry pie we made every year:

Berry Good Pie

1 9” pie shell
2 c berries (washed & drained)

Pour in shell

½ c sugar

Sprinkle over berries

¼ c flour
1 c sugar
½ c evaporated milk

Beat and pour over berries and sugar in shell.

¼ c butter
½ c sugar
¼ c flour

Cut in to form crumb mixture. Sprinkle over pie.

Bake at 350° for one hour.

After we moved to Utah, we couldn't do the dewberry tradition anymore, but I was determined to go home, so as soon as I graduated from high school, I ignored the full ride at the U and went straight back to College Station to attend Texas A&M. There, I introduced my roommate and one of the families I used to babysit for to dewberries. My freshman year, we had a good spring, with plenty of rain for the berries. We made a couple of pies and had some leftover berries to mix into vanilla ice cream. My sophomore year, it rained so much we might as well have called it a monsoon season. There were so many berries it was kind of ridiculous. But then, my junior year (and the last year I would spend in Texas before out-of-state tuition chased me back to Utah), there was a drought. A couple of years ago, I wrote this poem for a poetry class.

Broken Tradition

We went dewberry picking every May, my roommate and I,

Filling bucket after bucket with the sweet, wild fruit.

Laughing and trying to keep the heatstroke at bay.

The sun glared down, and the air around us seemed to sweat.

Filling bucket after bucket with the sweet, wild fruit,

We reached in amongst the tiny, brittle thorns.

The sun glared down, and the air around us seemed to sweat.

Dark purple juice dried inside the scratches in our skin.

We reached in amongst the tiny, brittle thorns,

Spikes that broke and lodged in knuckles and under nails

Dark purple juice dried inside the scratches in our skin

Highlighting the battle scars we gladly traded for our spoils.

But this year there was a drought.

The bone-dry ground produced no berries.

Only the withered, thorny vines of past seasons remained.

Along the rare country fencelines that sit beyond the city’s reach.

The bone-dry ground produced no berries.

We searched fruitlessly, our buckets empty

Along the rare country fencelines that sit beyond the city’s reach.

No reward for heatstroke this year.

We searched fruitlessly, our buckets empty.

We returned to the dorm with nothing to fill the pie crusts.

No reward for heatstroke this year—

My last year in Texas.

We went dewberry picking every May, my roommate and I,

Laughing and trying to keep the heatstroke at bay.

But this year there was a drought,

And only the withered, thorny vines of past seasons remained.