Carla Liss, Designed by George Maciunas,
Published by Fluxus: Sacrament Fluxkit (early 1970s)

" … enough to fully satisfy our legacy …"

On my birthday or thereabouts, The Muse and I escape whatever life we're living to engage in an annual ritual as sacred as Christmas. We flee to the edge of the backcountry, on the border of the Winaha/Tucannon Wilderness, to partake of an indigenous fruit, the Winaha Currant. We accidentally discovered them decades ago when on an otherwise routine mountain toodle. We found bushes leaden with clusters of lush black fruit emitting an overwhelmingly alluring scent and tasting quite extraordinary. We hesitantly waded into the adjacent chilling stream and commenced to harvest the fruit, punctuating our work with greedy, lip-staining nibbles of our prey. We returned that first day with a couple of plastic bags of fruit, enough to produce some reduction for use in the kitchen: an unusual drizzle over meat or dessert: Sweet but perfumy, Savory, and absolutely unique. These were not quite the generic black currents popular throughout Europe but a New World variant as unique as our region.

We found that first foray into Current-gathering more than refreshing. We didn't realize it initially, but we'd tasted what would become our Sacraments. The season. The location. The chilling water. The fruit. All became absolutely necessary for our continued vitality. Years in which we could not access our current crop, we became a sorry lot, unwashed heading into Autumn, unfed as harvest waned. The exile years were especially shaming as we were almost always too distant to make the pilgrimage, though we managed to make it a couple of years, and those made all the difference. To imagine entering Winter without having performed this sacred privilege is to imagine the very depth of penury. We've found no even inadequate replacement.

One year, the forest surrounding our sacred space burned. When we returned, the creeks and river were still flowing, but through a moonscape of blackened and downed timber. We knew we would never again know our world as we'd known it before, for most of the cathedral holding it had messily evaporated. We cheered when we found our current bushes had somehow escaped the conflagration. There they were, still filled with spiders, still alluringly overhanging the crisp waters. We clumsily clamored over windfalls to hesitantly, reverently step into that water again. The calf-chilling welcome that greeted us almost erased our recent foreboding upon seeing the apparent demise of our ancient forest. We set to work which seemed more like a kind of praying. We dutifully collected our fruit without stumbling and crept back out of that sanctuary, properly sanctified.

This year's extreme heat had rushed the season. We arrived more or less on time to find the crop already past, with only the barest reminders remaining, an odd berry here and there, dehydrated to intense concentration, flavor elevated to replace the handfuls we would not harvest. We took our host as nibbles, sharing what little bounty we found more or less evenly, for there's nothing to be gained from consuming more than one's fair share of any sacrament. These are not snack foods but spiritual feasts, even when—and maybe especially when— one's splitting dregs. We were no less sanctified for the smallness of our snack. We were present there, still struggling over windfall. The Muse snagged her jeans, leaving an enormous rent along one thigh. She was uninjured, even renewed inside.

We felt shocked to have somehow missed the season and swore to each other that we'd move up our pilgrimage on next year's calendar, for this is the most sacred stuff of our year. We celebrate Easter and Christmas with a different emphasis. This celebration on the edge of the Winaha Tucannon Wilderness seems more personal. We hang no lights and roast no goose. We drive almost seventy miles through the most familiar country, up out of the valley nearing the end of wheat harvest and through the meadows and mixed forest heading up into and over the hills—past elderberry in full fruit and through the deep dust only August can produce. We drive on native basalt cobble, jarring us, and smooth dirt tracks gentle as sheep's backs. We pass into the forest that once was and through a once-verdant valley now blackened by evil. What passes for a road narrows further, and it always seems as though we'll probably have to back our way out of there. Then we reach a clearing and know we've arrived again. This sacristy had been waiting for me. I suit up for taking the plunge. I leave my wallet and keys secreted in the car lest I fall into the sacred waters, stranding myself there, too close to heaven.

When faced with certainty or danger, The Muse and I chose the riskier option on our return toward what passes for civilization. We sentenced ourselves to many more miles of potentially bone-jarring cobbles and choking dust, yet we went purposefully. Once cleansed, we sense that we must face the dust before us rather than flee into any apparent security. We travel along a knife-edge bluff top with View Master®-quality vistas filling every distance. Thunderclouds began forming from whisps, as they often do this time of year. We might have been heading for a drenching. We happened upon a hillside covered in perfectly ripe huckleberries, and The Muse went feral. Of course, I quickly found a place to pull off to the side of that one-lane track in the unlikely event another vehicle might need to pass. We had not seen another vehicle in several hours. We engaged in the easy meditation huckleberry picking induces, with The Muse transfixed as she always becomes when harvesting fruit. She seems to experience genuine ecstasy when self-administering this greatest of all her sacraments. I notice my hands remembering the curious dance huckleberry bushes demand, all flipping branches and clever fingers. We captured enough fruit to fully satisfy our legacy despite the dearth of Winaha Currents this year. We returned home properly sanctified for another year. Amen!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz