While rereading an old entry from Musings from the Deep, written in July of 2008, I found myself smiling at a simple sentence.

“Come! The fruit market has just opened and the price is right. They only cost the time it takes to pick your fill.”

The original piece was called Dessert in the Backyard.

At the time I wrote:

“While working in the backyard yesterday and today I discovered these ripe wild strawberries begging to be picked and eaten with my morning cereal or as a treat in the evening with ice cream. They are late this year. Often they are ready in June. The wait is worth it though. The aroma of strawberry surrounds us as we pick, heightening the anticipation of devouring these tiny flavour bombs.

It is hard to believe that they are the parent of the cultivated strawberry we expect to find year-round at our grocer’s. This is the beginning of my annual 100-kilometre diet. First the strawberries, then raspberries, saskatoons, pin cherries, cranberries, and blueberries. Come! The fruit market has just opened and the price is right. They only cost the time it takes to pick your fill.”

Now it is 2026.

The wild and cultivated strawberries are once again blooming in our backyard, and rereading those words reminded me of my friend Jian.

Some years ago, a family originally from China settled in Marathon. They joined our church, and over time we became friends.

One day, while talking about life in northwestern Ontario, I mentioned the abundance of wild berries that grow here every summer.

Jian was intrigued.

“Would you take me to see them?” she asked.

When blueberry season arrived, I invited her to join me.

Five minutes from town we parked the truck, stepped into the bush, and entered what can only be described as nature’s grocery store.

There were blueberries stretching as far as the eye could see.

Wild strawberries peeked out from beneath the leaves. Raspberries glowed along the edges of the trail. Saskatoon bushes were heavy with fruit, and wild cranberries waited their turn later in the season.

Jian stopped and looked around.

Then she turned to me in astonishment.

“George,” she asked, “where are all the people? This is free food!”

I have never forgotten those words.

They reminded me how much we take for granted.

Most of us have grown accustomed to finding fruit neatly arranged on grocery store shelves. We complain if strawberries are unavailable in February or if blueberries are too expensive in January.

It takes someone new to this land to point out the obvious.

The forest itself is overflowing with food.

As we wandered along, I introduced Jian to one berry after another.

“This purple one is called a Saskatoon berry,” I explained. “Some people call it a sugar plum. Taste it.”

She did.

“Oh, and look at your fingers! See the purple stain? Indigenous peoples used these berries not only for food but also as a natural dye.”

A little farther on I pointed to another plant.

“Those are raspberries. Their shape makes them easy to recognize. Did you have raspberries where you grew up in China?”

She sampled those too.

We feasted our way through the morning until we reached an open clearing.

Before us stretched what looked like a blue carpet spread across the earth.

I knelt and gently gathered a branch heavy with berries.

“These,” I said, “are blueberries. And they’ll be here for much of the summer.”

Jian looked across the field in disbelief.

Then, in her wonderfully Mandarin-flavoured English, she repeated the question that has stayed with me ever since.

“George, where are all the people? This is free food!”

Every summer, when the berries begin to ripen, I hear her voice again.

And every summer I am reminded that sometimes it takes a newcomer to help us see the extraordinary abundance that has been waiting in our own backyard all along.