The Edible Forest

Brush your hand along the trail's edge here and you're touching the pantry. All these shoulder-high shrubs crowding in on you — this layer feeds half the canyon. The big maple-shaped leaves with the soft fuzz? That's thimbleberry. Come July it'll hand you a flat red berry that falls apart the second you pick it, sweet and a little tart, gone in one bite. Beside it, those arching canes with the prickles — salmonberry. Earliest fruit in these woods, glowing orange to deep red, and an early-summer prize if you beat the birds to it. Now look lower, at the glossy leathery leaves down near your knees. Two dark-berry plants share that floor. Salal, with the round leaves and the inky blue-black fruit that dries down sweet and chewy, good trail food if you know it. And Oregon-grape — holly-shaped, spiny-edged, hung with sour purple berries the birds clean out by fall. One you do not touch: if you see a thick green stalk armored in pale spines, big as a parasol, that's devil's club. Leave it be. Brush past it and you'll remember the lesson for a week. Pick one leaf shape to keep your eye on as you walk. The canyon's about to get loud — let your hands do the noticing first.