Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 2, 1993 TAG: 9309080433
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CLAYTON BRADDOCK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Tierney is worried about computer-loving Americans riding the electronic-data highway, and the growing public interest in interactive video. It's only part of the story, the first milepost of the nation's electronic fun-and-games mania.
Many of us are not comfortable with the idea that computer manipulation is preparing American youth for such things as high-tech warfare, especially when we read elsewhere that young Americans can't do chin-ups worth a hoot. Adventure too far from the nearest air-conditioned living room apparently has little appeal for many of tomorrow's leaders.
In all fairness, swashbuckling opportunities are hard to come by. Not everybody can be a Thor Heyerdahl. Where would anybody go to emulate a Douglas Fairbanks or an Errol Flynn? So what's left to out-swash Indiana Jones? To echo the plaintive words by singer Peggy Lee: Is that all there is?
Not at all. There's always picking blackberries.
Don't laugh. It's in a class by itself.
What's the payoff? For openers, it's a low-cost pathway to courage and discipline. And there are even a few warfare skills. It could become the poor man's Outward Bound, with a hint of Marine boot camp at Quantico.
We're not talking berries from a commercial patch. We're talking tall, thick, deep patches, all clumped into a dense tangle of bushes on a hillside about a foot deep in leaves, the bottom layer of which dropped the week before Columbus ran around in the Caribbean. This hillside was last trod by a man wearing deerskin moccasins and carrying a scalplock on his belt.
A starving titmouse looking for a berry breakfast would die of hunger or fear before venturing into this mother of all thorny berry patches.
Meeting this challenge requires physical dexterity, a thirst for knowledge, and a need to find the inner self. Here's the basic scenario:
You have watched from outside the big patch since the last cold weather in mid-April. It is now on the cusp of July and August. You can almost hear the berries dripping purple juice. More than a hundred bushes creak and crackle as they sharpen their needlelike daggers.
If you lean in close, you can see the stems, large and small, and practice reaching out to grab flesh like NFL hunks in preseason workouts. Leaders of an adult blackberry tribe have a mind for teamwork and can be downright hostile.
When you can see those hundreds of dark purple berries hanging there in alluring invitation, you can almost hear the Big Daddy bush whisper: ``Go ahead. Make my day, buster.''
The first challenge of the expedition is to confront the tribe wearing only old battered sneakers, no socks, short pants and a thin cotton short-sleeved shirt. Long-sleeved shirts, heavy jeans and gloves are for amateurs. This is a sport for champions, for rugged individualists who don't flinch at the sight of blood.
First, you step inside the first perimeter of combat, a ring of smaller juvenile bushes just beginning to learn the art of tearing cotton and ripping human flesh. Like young tigers and other animals of prey, they watch the older members of the tribe - to learn how to grab, slash and cut.
Just beyond, the mother lode - dozens of fat, plum-sized blackberries - gleams quietly in the sun-dotted shade of the hardwood forest.
Then you move in for the first spiritual meditation at close quarters. You hold out your hands to show they're empty of sticks and other weapons. ``I live here, too, fellas,'' you say to the older bushes, holding up an open palm in a gesture of friendship. ``I just want a few berries for breakfast.'' One no-nonsense bush glowers like a burly wrestler.
Detecting no open hostility, you move in closer and reach for the first plump berry. Immediately, the nearest young bush snags your shirt near the armpit and waits for something to develop. Not to appear hostile, you reach closer - slowly - for the target berry. You make certain the main part of your body doesn't move a muscle while the arm moves closer to the berry. Inches away is an adult and very hostile bush with thorns like Arab scimitars.
Then a bee - the tribe's air support - lands on your shoulder.
In pure reflex, your whole body twitches, and one of the warrior bushes hooks into your shorts just above the thigh line. You try to think spiritual harmony: slow and easy. Pray. No quick moves. One more tight muscle stretch and you can reach at least five berries without losing a drop of blood.
Bingo! All five berries are deftly picked and dropped into the little plastic tub you brought to bring home the berries. You slip your left leg into reverse to begin a new approach to the next bush only about a foot away.
Gotcha! Another warrior bush, a distant cousin to the Tyrannosaurus Rex, has quietly hooked your right shoelace with a barb big enough to hook an 8-pound largemouth bass. And his little brother is gleefully hanging on to your cut-off jeans somewhere near the zipper.
Not to worry. You can still lean to the right and execute another stretch. Eight more berries are plucked and dropped into the plastic tub .
After 10 minutes of careful disentanglement, and more soul-soothing inner harmony, you maneuver back about three steps - without bloodshed, you think, until you feel the sting of tiny drops of perspiration seeping into a few thin incisions. Then you spot a small arrogant bush that has sneaked up behind you trying to make a reputation with the big guys.
This goes on another half-hour - brief incursions behind enemy lines, more wounds, more rips in the shirt, more curses and threats to cut down all blackberry bushes up to the mother lode. Soon the tub is full.
All in all, blackberry pickin' is like the Olympics: not the rewards but the achievement. It's proving you're a champion through discipline, courage and spiritual harmony. The blackberries ain't bad either
\ Clayton Braddock is an assistant professor of journalism at Radford University.
by CNB