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BLACK BEARS AND BLUEBERRIES

Being married and with children and both of us working full time jobs as well didn't leave a whole lot of "real" together time for us.

It happened several years ago that I was blueberrying and just happened to make the acquaintance of a black bear. Well, we didn't really take all that much time to get acquainted, let's just say we met.

I was in Tinmouth, Vermont at a place called Chipman Lake or Tinmouth Pond, it goes by both names. It was a lake but the land is claiming it back, so now it's a pond.

It is a pleasant walk around the lake and makes a wonderful day hike with lots to see, beautiful flora and fauna including a few endangered species. Just beyond the Pavilion Dance hall, or what used to be when I was frequenting this spot, is an open piece of land that belongs to or used to belong to the Church of England. It just sits there in its wild state, the church not making any use of it that I have ever been aware of. Just a short distance from the wood line between the lake and the more densely forested area in this open area owned by the church is a fair size stand of low shrubs, BLUEBERRIES, wonderful, succulent, tongue tantalizing blueberries and good size one too. They are meaty and sweet and that deep midnight purple-blue of a real good blueberry. These blueberries are some of the best blueberries I've ever tasted. Well, the berries were right at their peak this particular day and I decided I should pick myself some of them, at least enough for some of those wonderful blueberry pancakes and a couple of pies and I commenced picking. Things were going along real fine and the picking was fairly easy. At least I didn't have the thorny brambles to contend with. That was a plus.

Picking blueberries is a little more tedious picking than picking raspberries or blackberries but a lot less back breaking than picking strawberries. If the blueberries are really good and ripe you can comb them off the branches by bunches into your berry bucket or just shake them off and let them fallping, ping, tap, tap, tap into whatever you plan to carry them home in. Of course doing it this way, you have to winnow out all the leaves and twigs that fall into your berry bucket as well. However, picking them one at a time can take the better part of a day to get a decent harvest and it gets pretty boring unless you have company. I was alone, or at least I thought I was and my mind was on a slice of homemade blueberry pie topped off with a large scoop of

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