It seems only appropriate to end these tales of Blueberry Week in Maine. It’s full-on August now, and some of my best Augusts were spent there as a teenager, in a little house on Lake Sebago. And it’s no surprise that blueberries—like those other Maine delicacies, lobster and maple syrup—figure prominently into my favorite recollections of those trips. After all, we always stayed with dear family friends (Dave and Sue) in a television-free cabin, sans computers, in a place where cell phone service was spotty at best. It was the simple pleasures that became the fabric of our days.

Instead of our electronic devices, the greatest source of entertainment was each other. Sue loved reading in the plastic lawn chair propped up by the water, on the cabin’s tiny inlet that served as a beach. She also liked to take morning walks, and made us rooibos tea when the sun dipped low—a fixation borne from a trip to South Africa. Dave gathered us around the coffee table for card games, and he and my dad shared a fondness for almanac trivia sessions. (Seriously, I can’t tell you how many times I was quizzed about the five longest suspension bridges in the United States.) They were both amateur astronomers, too, and no trip was complete before we’d gathered once on the dock after dinner, starstruck under the brilliant rural sky, to piece together constellations.

(more…)