PAT NEAL: The path to blackberry heaven

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, August 12, 2026

I THOUGHT I had died and gone to blackberry heaven. It was like a dream and a nightmare all rolled into one.

I was clawing my way through an old clear-cut that had grown up just enough to make it miserable. The tree limbs and tops that were left over from logging had rotted just enough to break when I put my weight on them, dropping me into a hole where the Devil’s Club grew over my head. The Devil’s Club is an evil plant that resembles a whip-shaped cactus with a crown of thorny leaves on top.

Push a Devil’s Club, and they’ll push back, leaving you with clusters of spiny souvenirs to fester under your hide.

Berry picker’s hands often look like they’ve been mauled by a bear. Maybe they were. You cannot let the bears scare you out of a berry patch.

By blackberries, I do not mean the oversized exotic blackberries that grow along the road in the fall. We are after the infinitely superior, little native wild blackberry that grows in old burns and clearcuts, the further from the road, the better.

Blackberries have always been a valuable commodity. The Indians dried them into cakes that were stored in baskets for the winter. Blackberries are good canned or frozen, but nothing beats them fresh.

Blackberries grow largest in partial shade, but they are sweetest in full sun. It is almost impossible to ruin blackberries, but you must pick them first.

To pick them, you must find a blackberry patch. There is no better way to lose a friend or make an enemy than to pick in someone else’s blackberry patch, even by accident.

In a good patch, you might pick a gallon of berries a day. Find an exceptional patch, and you can join the hallowed ranks of the 5-gallon-a-day club. When it comes to picking blackberries, trust no one.

Blackberry vines are easiest to spot in the spring when the blossoms turn the ground white as snow, but you can’t make a blackberry pie out of blossoms. You must wait until blossoms turn into berries and pick them before the bears do.

Bears can see in the dark, which gives them a distinct advantage. Bears are not as picky as most people about picking blackberries. They’ll eat the unripe blackberries along with the black ones.

There’s often very little left of a berry patch once a bear gets done picking it. You should find another patch.

Lucky for me, I’d found a berry patch that hadn’t been discovered by anyone.

I stepped into a mountain beaver hole, then fell into a little cave behind an overturned stump. My legs were trapped in a tangle of rotten limbs. I was wedged in so tight I couldn’t move, but there I was surrounded by my own secret blackberry heaven.

There were endless skeins of shiny blackberries. I began to feel very rich. I plopped the berries into my bucket by the handful. Nothing else seemed to matter.

I did not notice a slight buzzing.

I’d forgotten the general rule of blackberry picking, the biggest berries generally grow on top of a hornet’s nest.

Experts tell us to remain calm when hornets attack. They are the same people who say you should remain calm when you’re lost or wake up with a skunk on your chest.

I remained calm until I got stung and stung again, then wallowed out of the brush hole, losing the bucket and one of my shoes somewhere.

It’s a tough trail to blackberry heaven. I’m going back there now.

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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.

He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.