One week a year for more than 25 years, Deserae’s family has traded their comfortable, suburban house for a tiny trailer with limited indoor plumbing next to a brown lake. This is not a ploy to teach their children how the “other side” lives or a stunt for a reality television show, but rather an actual vacation.

The trailer holds many joys (I am told), but one of the big draws is blackberry picking. Can’t quite afford that week at Disney, but still want to do something this summer the kids will forever cherish? Try blackberry picking at Clar-Mar Lake Campground! Every year, Deserae and I join the fam for a weekend, so I am kind of an expert on the art of blackberry picking. Here’s how it goes.

Deserae’s mom welcomes us to the campground by telling us how good the blackberry picking is this year. “It’s amaaaaaaaazing,” she says.

If this announcement is overheard by another member of the family who has actually seen the blackberries this week, it is immediately called into question.

“Mom, what are you talking about? They’re all red.”

“Shhhhhhhh, they’re fine!” When you get a chance to multiply your picking efforts by two whole workers, you do not let facts get in the way.

After dinner, we all get ready for blackberry picking. A picking outfit should include long sleeves to protect against thorns and jeans tucked into tube socks to protect against dignity.

Once everybody is ready to go, Deserae’s dad makes his big announcement. “I’m not going.”

Every time, he provides a reason why he cannot make it. So far, he has not been able to hit upon an excuse sturdy enough to hold up against ten minutes of “Come on, you have to go!” Eventually, he grumbles into the minivan, and we all pile in for the two-minute drive to the meadows.

During this drive, Deserae’s mom gives us all a pep talk. We must fill our buckets tonight! If we do, we’ll have enough for a blackberry pie! She then goes on to talk about how expensive blackberries are at the store and how much money we’re saving on pie by picking our own. She uses the word “gold” a lot.

The way she talks about it, I’ve always thought a pie requires at least $40 of blackberries. This past weekend, she let a few numbers slip. “The cheapest I’ve seen blackberries at the store is like a dollar a pint. To make a pie, you need, what, probably six or seven pints!”

As someone who recently dropped $7 on a tray of soggy nachos at a baseball game, this did not feel like an unreasonable amount of money to spend on avoiding giant thorns for an hour. Unfortunately, it was too late to argue. We were already there. The Neros’ dog Willy jumped out of the van and snuck into the woods to murder some small creatures.

At this point, we each get our own bucket, which provides me with enough entertainment to last the entire hour. Early on, I realized that you could use the word “bucket” as a euphemism for “butt” and get infinite comedy gold. For example, this year we were using some of the blackberries in a dump cake, which allowed me to yell over and over, “MY BUCKET IS FULL, AND I’M READY FOR A DUMP cake.” Like I said, comedy gold.

We walk to the edge of the meadow, and sure enough the blackberries are all about two weeks away from being ripe.

“There are plenty of good ones!” Deserae’s mom insists. “You just have to hunt!”

“Hunting” involves throwing your whole body into a thorn bush to get that one just-out-of-reach-kind-of-black blackberry. This is what an hour of hunting sounds like:

• “Bee! Bee! I’M ALLERGIC TO BEES!!!! Wait maybe it was just a fly. NO DEFINITELY A BEEEEE! Wait…”
• “Dustin, you have long arms…”
• “MY BUCKET IS MESSY! GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY BUCKET!” etc. etc.
• “How did a mosquito bite through my shirt?”
• “Al, you have to put the berries in your bucket!”
  “I picked them, I can eat them!”
• “That’s a beetle, not a berry.”
• “My hair! I’m trapped!!”

As you can see, loads of fun.

This past weekend, while I was busy trying to break through a curtain of thorns, I heard a commotion behind me.

“Willy stop! Does he have something in his mouth? He’s foaming!!”

I turned around to see Willy streak past me, foam dripping from his face. All of a sudden, he fell over.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Then he started writhing in the grass. That’s when everyone smelled it.

“He got skunked!”

The only thing worse than a dead dog is a skunked dog.

Pandemonium ensued. Alerted by the yelling, people started pulling up in golf carts, perhaps thinking that all the excitement was caused by someone actually finding a patch of ripe blackberries. In between yells, Deserae’s mom whispered to me, “So do you think we’re done blackberry picking?” I laughed, but then she asked the same question 20 seconds later, so she kind of wasn’t kidding.

Unfortunately, we were done blackberry picking. We got the dog back to the trailer to try to deskunk him. It took several rewashings over the course of an hour, but eventually he started to smell normal again. The thing that worked best was a hydrogen peroxide concoction we mixed up. I don’t know how much it cost, but I’ll bet it was close to $7.

Blackberry picking is great, but next year I think I’m just going to make a quick stop at the grocery store before we get to the trailer.

LIFE LESSON #78

The quickest way to get out of blackberry picking is to get sprayed by a skunk.