I am learning the lay of the land in Port Townsend, WA as I begin my 10-month ministerial internship at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Lucky for me my lovely apartment on the Quimper Pennisula is surrounded by hiking trails, and I have arrived in time for blackberry season.

So after settling in, and filling my refrigerator and pantry shelves with a generous trip to the Food Coop and to Trader Joes in Silverdale, I donned my jeans, garden shirt and gloves and walked to the patch Stephen and I had located several days before.

 The landscape is lush and the brambles intense. Blackberry picking in the Pacific Northwest is serious business and more than once I found myself totally caught up in my desire to reach the thumb-sized black jewels. Walking home, with a couple of quarts in my shoulder bag, I was sure that I had never picked many blackberries before, remembering with fondness the wild raspberries and blueberries I had gathered in the Upper Delaware.

But upon returning home and examining my scratches that dotted my knees, grabbing me through my thick jeans, a memory of scratches from my elementary school days broke through my consciousness. Our brains store our memories and it's lovely to be exploring this new place and remembering old ones too.