Stealthy Healthy Chess Berries and Leftovers

Blackberries require concentration.

Sharp! 

Barbs grab and stab. Go in easy, come out hard. They don't like to let go.

Clothing snags. Skin bleeds

You've got to think several moves ahead. Winds shift, blowing a vine to imbed one fine needle in the hem of your shirt. Or, your attention wanders and you forget to think three dimensionally about how you're going to bring your curled fingers, that are now holding a fat sweet berry, out from the small space you successfully navigated into the bramble when it was a long, slim-as-a-banana, empty hand. And, when those stickers prick your flesh, you might react and drop the sweetest gem you just selected into the sprawling underbrush of thorns. Rats! Another one for a passing bird, mouse, or resident skunk.

Mindful. Slow. Peripheral and focused vision - each a requisite. Oh, and close-fitting clothes and sturdy non-slip shoes, on account of the hill. Cover your toes.

Early in the season, when some berries are deep purple to black and oh so ripe, others red, hard, and sour, and still others sweet little white blossoms, bees are a factor as well. There are plenty of plant parts to share. I love the bees, and they seem to know it. We don't bother each other, but if you're not used to it, and a bee lands on you, you might react in your distraction and move suddenly, colliding with a waiting prickly stem. Cunning. Hungry. These blackberry bushes plan to devour you. Gleaming swords sharpen themselves in the sunlight, like a willful opponent with a cartoon star shining brazenly on one too white tooth.

You've got to watch every move. Yours, and your opponent's.

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Queen of Katwe, last year's docudrama about ten-year-old Phiona Mutesi's stunning rise from an illiterate girl from Katwe, a slum in Kampala, Uganda, to international chess master, lays out her innate ability to think eight moves ahead. I loved watching this feel-good movie, and I'll betcha she also would be really stealthy at picking blackberries.

Both sports, if we can call them that, require the ability to think in three-dimensional space. I wish I had taken up chess. I know the basics, but marvel at those who can hold the whole board, the other player's style, and the move of the moment in her mind.

But at the end of the game, there's only the satisfaction of having won. At the end of picking berries, you've got a bowl or more full of deliciousness... true, too soon they're gone, but what a way to go! No left-overs.

Pass the bandaids, please.