Elderberry Season 2025

 

    It's officially elderberry season here on the East Coast, a season about as bittersweet as the waning of summer. The nights have been quite cold, at a time where it was hard to remember what cold really feels like. In the meantime, Elderberries are deepening their bottomless irises of blacks and purples. I went to a spot shown to me by a friend and was greeted by hanging clusters forcing the branches to stoop and bow to the soil that raised them. 

    Black Elderberry (Sambuchus nigra) can be identified by hanging clusters of white flowers, green unripe berries, or purple ripe berries come August, usually with reddish stalks and opposite arranged, slightly compound leaves. The species is generally found around trailside disturbed habitat, likes water, and is chock full of great immune system boosting antioxidants. However, it is not advised to consume the species raw. 

    To make a great elderberry syrup, simply cook the berries down with a little water, stir in some ginger and clove, strain, then stir in some raw honey to sweeten and thicken. Taking a spoonful a day will help boost your immune system as the days shorten and mornings become so crisp you can reach out and snap the morning dew. 

Lost Muskie Musings

 

    I lost a muskie this morning. I timed the window oh, so fucking perfectly too, with mornings that for the first time in months were crisp and cold that suspended a slight mist above the river, an uptick in flows and downtick in water temps, and a lunar major that coincided with the rising of the sun. I woke up at six and immediately drove down to the river, throwing topwater and figure-8-ing after each cast. 

    Hopping spots, skipping around back and forth like a little rippling flatstone between all the river spots that at this point I've fished for so many years and know like the back of my hand. I had a small muskie barely tail-smack my glide that I missed. Still kept moving down river, moving to a canal lock where I'd seen them stack up in the mouth of before. I watched my bone colored glidebait swipe left past a tree, then watched a giant muskie swipe right out of the tree and t-bone it. I had her one for about five seconds before my line suddenly went slack. My 50lb flourocarbon leader looked like hell. I sunk to the ground in defeat, immediately called Max and told him what happened. If that glidebait had just popped out of it's toothy maw I wouldn't have been so upset, but the fact that it broke off had me worried that it wouldn't be able to properly feed with such a large bait stuck in its jaw. However, I've seen videos of fish with practically no upper jaw, muskies with what look with propeller wounds, slash marks, all ilk of injury. We should do our best to conserve and handle well all fish we plan on releasing, but nature is a tough bitch and fish are hardier than we think. I'm gonna muskie fish more and that means I will lose more fish. 

    Muskie fishing is one of the most adversarial things I've ever had the privilege of becoming obsessed with. That's something that I will just have to accept if I'm going to become a member of the muskie guild, which is a full intention that I have. 

    Muskie anglers have an obsession like no other breed of angler on the planet, following moon phases about as closely as the mouthless Luna moths I've been finding the past few days at work. Lunas don't feed in their adult form, packing all feeding activity into the walnuts while in larval form in the July full moon and then emerging two to three weeks later glowing green under the moonlight to breed and dance and die. 

    Embrace loss, both mouthed and unmouthed. Life's a blessing to have lost at all! How lucky you are to have such things to lose. 

Snakes on Blueberry Hill

 

    "But all Supernatural means up here is a little bit more natural than regular ol' natural" 

    - David James Duncan 

    I enjoyed stumbling and dozing as the world shrunk to glistening blueberry sized as my legs did the same thing when I closed my eyes. My mother dragged me along to a Family Church Retreat, where all weekend my waking hours were unceasingly evangelized. I'm glad I went, but I'm not a frequent churchgoer, never felt God in churches. My spirit is instead assaulted each time I step outside by bits of the flowing Creator in moving water, mountains, in ancient trees and the flitter of shadows in between them. I worship spontaneously, the way I treat all sacred, and believe that the same God that send down the Son of Love who taught loving your neighbors, who healed the sick, and who broke bread with lepers, prostitutes, and tramps instead of shaming them in the streets, also is in each and every living thing, mountain, ocean, and moving water. The buzzards circle ahead. I pray to the Unseen Perfection that I can take them as a sign to keep dying, keep rebirth, keep improving. 

Things I liked about the Church Retreat: 

- The blueberries that grew everywhere in the nearby woods 

- Swaying to music 

Things I disliked about the Church Retreat: 

- Protestant Work Ethic 

- Support for Zionism 

In case you wanted a touch of color in nature, here's a Blood-Red Russala, some Blueberries, and a Ghost-pipe, all of which I found in the past week: 

    On the fish front, shallow water snakeheads on hollow-body frogs seems to be the name of the game, as it seems to always be at this point of the summer. I tried pickling red-onions for the first time and they elevated my fish taco game enough that any future taco game I have will now require copious amounts of freshly squeezed acids. My family ended up eating all of them before they had time for a proper definitional "pickle." I'll make more.