Thoreau felt a little guilty about going cranberrying. You can ruin a good walk by looking at the world with utilitarian eyes.
But he made a good argument about portion control: A pocketful of berries does not set you up in business. And a pocketful will give you a taste of the place.
Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man’s genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be wholly without an object, though it be only to ascertain the flavor of a cranberry, for it will not be only the quality of an insignificant berry you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy.
When we speak of having a sense of a place, we don’t often mean taste or smell.
I feel a little less guilty about sampling the late blackberries.
• Source: Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits, ed. by Branley P. Dean; New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000, p. 166.
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