I tend to feel just a little bit smug when I pick berries, especially now that I am being so all-fired mindful about it. At this time of the season—late July—huckleberries and blueberries are out in force, and the thimbleberries are not far behind. A friend shared a genius life-berry hack, in which you clean your berries and then freeze them after spreading them out on a cookie sheet. They come out individually frozen. You can store them in a freezer-friendly container and take a handful whenever you want to add some to your yogurt or your cereal. I tried it, and they thaw almost immediately.

There are two ways to pick the huckleberries and blueberries. One: you can get a metal container that has a narrow opening with a set of tines protruding from one side. You draw these tines through the branches and collect everything inside your swath. Then you give the contraption a shake, and the berries fall over the lip into the cannister. It’s fast, but you get a lot of extra stuff, like leaves and twigs and green berries. Two: you can pick them individually by hand, which takes a while at the beginning, but your batch will be much easier to sort and clean. I’ve tried both, and I couldn’t for the life of me tell you which is more efficient.

But what with my new allegiance to mindfulness, I’m going with the second method, because it is more methodical and less wasteful. Plus, I like picking berries, but I hate cleaning them. Especially the blueberries, because you have to soak them in water and wait while hundreds of tiny worms vacate the premises. I try not to eat blueberries while I’m picking.

Here’s a great word: drupelet. This is the name of the tiny segments that make up “composite” berries like raspberries and salmonberries. What a cute word. Drupelet, drupelet, drupelet. I gather there is a bit of etymology involved, but I like to think that a normally straightlaced botanist dreamed it up while coming down off a massive dose of laughing gas. Huckleberries and blueberries don’t have drupelets. That’s why when you freeze them individually, the look like a jar of multicolored buckshot.

My current spot for getting non-drupelet berries is an area of second-growth evergreens near the city ballpark. People often walk close by me without seeing me, but when they do spot me, they are almost always pleased to talk about gathering berries and other wild food. I think an affinity for the hunter-gatherer life must still reside in all of us, somewhere way down deep.