The Berry Chose Me

I didn’t choose this berry. It chose me.

I was having the time of my life picking huckleberries in the lower alpine of the Yukon back in 2019—selling them for ten dollars a pound—so when the snow came early, I was disappointed. When I got back home to Newfoundland in November, I headed up the Northern Peninsula to check out a patch of red berries my landlord had told me about. Just a rookie at the edge of the marsh, bucket and picker in hand, trying to figure out which way to push in. And right then, out of the spruce trees strode a man, glowing with enthusiasm and carrying eight full beef buckets like they weighed nothing at all.

He grinned as if we'd known each other for years.

"What ya at?" I says to him.

"This is it, b'y," he replies.

"Best kind," he says, nodding toward the eight buckets. "Picked those in an hour."

I figured he was about sixty-eight.

"Eighty-four," he says.

That was the moment. Standing there in the middle of a Labrador marsh, looking at a man in his eighties carrying eight full beef buckets with a smile on his face, it hit me.

This is what I'll be doing for the rest of my life.

During most seasons, my children join me in the marsh, walking the same ground, learning the same land, and picking the very berry that hooked me in that moment.

What I couldn't have known back then was what those berries would do to my body.

When I was younger, I lived for endurance sports—backcountry running, cross-country skiing, skating the fjord. But between berry seasons, I stopped completely. The six-hour training sessions disappeared. I simply picked berries... and ate them. Every day during the harvest, I'd eat as many as two pounds.

Yet somehow, my body didn't seem to know the difference.

One day I stepped out of the shower, walked past a mirror, then stopped and doubled back. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. Even without training, I looked in better shape than ever.

That's when something from Grade 6 science came rushing back.

Plants respond to their environment. Stress forces adaptation. Structure determines function.

I started wondering if the same harsh conditions that shape the people who harvest these marshes also shape the berries growing in them.

Nutritional scientists often describe this idea as plants being "stressed for success." Exposed to relentless cold, wind, poor soil, and short growing seasons, many plants produce higher levels of protective compounds—polyphenols, flavonoids, tannins, and other phytochemicals. The berries become smaller, denser, and more intensely flavored: nature's own survival strategy.

I couldn't help but wonder...

If those compounds help the plant survive one of the harshest climates on Earth, what might they be doing inside the people who eat them every day?