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Gordon de Frane

Indian Summer

Each year my family watches the Moon’s journey through the
heavens, arriving at mid point on the celestial equator marks the
official beginning of summer. For my family and especially for Ter’
(mum) and me, the beginning of summer means it’s berry-picking
season. The white plastic ice cream pails would always be assembled
and washed and carefully dried and ready to receive their bounty of
berries. In the old days, baskets made from spruce and cedar roots and
cedar bark would have been common. I recall that berries are also
called stoomb — sometimes it means the meal that finishes a meal.

Since my earliest memories our family would be gathered and
make ready for picking berries each summer. The prized berries were
the big tame ones, the Himalayan Blackberries; they make the best
tasting jam with the memory of summer locked away in jars for later
pleasure, reliving the warm sun filled days during the cold winter
moons. Pure cakes of dried berries were served to highborn during
feasts and important celebrations. The common or lowborn people in
our communities made do with mixed cakes of dried berries. We
picked wild blackberries, strawberries and salmonberries. As children,
we picked thimble and salmonberry shoots too. Once peeled we would
dip the shoots in sugar and eat them fresh; Ter’ would peel and steam
them as the first wild vegetable of the season.

Other berries picked included soap berries, which until recently,
we got only rarely from Elders or friends who shared some of their
precious cache of these mouth puckering, yet delicious berries. Of all
the berries, they are probably the most sought after. When whipped,
sweetened with sugar and mixed with a little cold water, you get the
most impossible looking Indian confection I know of, like eating
whipped salmon coloured clouds. I remember the first time I ate some;
they are funny tasting, almost soapy, I guess that’s why they were
called soap berries, sour-tasting mouth pursing experience.

I fondly recall my first time eating soap berries; it happened when
we were staying over with Elders on Penelakut—Kuper Island. They
were Auntie Rose and Uncle Roger Peters; back then, they were
already Elders, it seemed to me when I was young; back then they
seemed ancient. Now auntie, who survives her husband Roger, seems

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