It's that Michigan Moment in August when you have spent a sun drunk morning at the beach in Lake Michigan for the hundredth time this year and you long for a hundred more days before summer closes. With sand dusting your feet and salt lingering on your lips from your lunch of potato crisps you shake out your beach blanket and venture to the car for a drive in the countryside. After a short respite from the late summer sun and a chorus from the back seat of the car you pull over at DeGrandchamps Blueberry farm to pick a sweet treat for dessert tonight. Gathering white buckets, you watch as they dash down the rows of blueberry bushes bursting with fat ripe clusters of berries searching for the just-right bounty. They reach their young tanned hands out and with an initial tiny plop and ping the blueberries start to fill the buckets. The little one dives between rows to discover all the hidden places. We all exclaim "Look at this one!" "This is the perfect blueberry!" "I found the biggest one yet!" Your fingertips become stained blue as you continue harvesting nature's perfect jewel. Your lips are sweet with the taste of blueberries as you test every third berry you pick. Fresh blueberries warmed by the sun are delicious like nothing else in the world and you treasure the goodness almost as much as you treasure the moment witnessing your children relishing in nature and food. With your blueberry buckets brimming to the edge you start the trip home with the perfect summer anthem playlist in the car, the taste of blueberries on your tongues, the anticipation of blueberry cobbler after dinner. After a hundred days of summer the sun is getting lower earlier every evening and you know the days at the lake are nearing their end as summer begins to close. Blueberry picking is the last sweet gift of the summer. And lucky you with the eager pickers you can preserve today's blueberries for the taste of summer all winter long, giving you the glimpse of another hundred grand days at the beach next year. And more blueberries to come.
The nature of shooting film means that sometimes your stories aren't shared until a month, sometimes two later. The beauty of shooting film is getting to stare out your kitchen window at a scene of brilliant autumn foliage on November 1st and pull a bag of handpicked blueberries from the freezer to make blueberry cobbler and getting to relive the summer days all over again, in your kitchen AND in photographs and in your memories. Long live summer. And film.