Blackberries: they dangle temptingly, insinuating themselves. Wild fruit is evocative. What was once a donkey paddock between two arms of woodland has, over the past 10 years or so, become a bramble patch.
There are also tangles of dog rose, thickets of hawthorn and scattered poles of ash saplings among the grass. The paddock is being reclaimed by woodland. There are irresistible forces at work here that make all those years of human labour count for nothing.
The scrub bears fruit as a reward for neglect. This is a wild place, rich for wild life now and barely accessible to people. Few of us walk here but someone keeps the path open, snipping the irrepressible thorny stems with secateurs. If they stopped doing it, even for one summer, the path would close over, heal up.
It’s as if the pressure from all the vegetation, a vast green weight, is closing the path’s tunnel, making it more like a mineshaft. Soon, a dark mass of thorns will swallow the way. But the blackberries are wonderful. Some are sticky-sweet, some are fermenting into wine, others are earthy, muddy, gritty. After a while foraging, the taste brings on a mood, darkly purple, like the stain of the juice.
According to folklore, blackberries are fruits of the devil. The devil fell from heaven and landed in a bramble bush, cursing it by pissing on the blackberries after Michaelmas Day (29 September, or 10 October in the old calendar). The devil instructed wise women and cunning men on the medicinal and ritual uses of blackberries.
The devil was once Pan, the lusty spirit of the woods, demonised and transformed into Satan, when behaving naturally was seen as the incarnation of evil. Perhaps, after all these years, it is this force which drives the brambles to reclaim stolen land.
Stories of forbidden fruit make them more delicious and the taste of blackberries for the autumn equinox is full of temptation to stray from the path of righteous management and find pleasure in the wild.
