the swift blackberry apocalypse

UPDATE (6/22/2013):
It is now berry season again. When I wrote this last year, I was high on all the other joys of a Portland summer. The berries had mostly blown past me. Not so this year. I've walked downstairs to the farmers' market almost every week for several weeks to buy strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and, yes, blackberries. I regularly lurch into Hot Lips Pizza demanding a marionberry soda. I guess what I'm saying is that I am now That Guy I was (gently) poking fun at last year. And, yeah, around September 13, you will very likely find me running frantically around the PNW "looting every last blackberry and Swift I can find." So it goes.

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(9/13/2012) The short weeks between Labor Day and the Autumnal Equinox are, it turns out, a time of Fear and Loathing in Portland, Oregon. We arrived here in midsummer, when Oregon is a paradise unrivaled on Earth: Sunny, but not hot; humid, but not sweaty; green, and breezy. With weather like that the Oregonians are positively giddy.  Ordinary citizens walk down the street smiling at the sky like they have Down's Syndrome, and-- I am not kidding about this-- spontaneously breaking out into song. Sunlight is well known to provide Vitamin D; in Oregon, it apparently also provides Vitamin E, the infamous MDMA, the rave drug Ecstasy.

And then Labor Day happens, or as I like to call it, the kickoff of Blackberry Panic. My awareness of Blackberry Panic began with this humble reminder on the Willamette Week's "It List: The Top 10 Things in Portland and the World"

3. Blackberries Eat them while you can, as they will soon be gone/obscenely priced for 10 months.

OK, that makes sense. Good advice I'll try to follow.  Of course, living mostly in the southwest, the closest thing I've ever had to an in-season fruit or vegetable is a Hatch green chili, but I'm nothing if not up for new experiences.

But it didn't end there.  Montana's supervisor, the Associate Dean, is a fellow beagle-companion-person.  Her husband has a love-hate relationship with their beagle, Ruby. Yesterday it was mostly hate, because he left an entire container of blackberries on the kitchen table and Ruby leapt up on the table and ate them all. And then it was all over except for the

ZOMG! ALL THE BLACKBERRIES ARE GONE AND WE WILL HAVE NO MORE FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR WE'RE ALL DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED

So, we're watching from the roof of our building as crazed blackberry-hunters run panicked through the burning city streets like they are being chased by zombies crawling out of their very graves, and we get a text from our webfootted friend, Sonya:

OMG OMG OMG YOU HAVE TO COME OVER AND WATCH THE SWIFTS LIKE NOW!

The Swifts?  Turns out watching the migrating Swifts is a northwest tradition. Every year, thousands of Swifts gather in Portland in preparation for migration to Central America and Venezuela. However, ominously,

THEY ARE ONLY HERE FOR LIKE A WEEK OMG OMG OMG

In Oregon, the leaves begin to turn and The Fear
arises in the Oregonians

So, there it is. All summer, as we raved about the temperate weather and complimented new acquaintances on their friendliness, we heard it, again and again and again: "Talk to me in February." The encroaching mists of winter are always there in Portland.  Even in the sunny summer, they lurk somewhere outside the city like a bill you don't have quite enough money to pay.  After Labor Day, Portlanders can feel the mist rising as in a Stephen King novel and they desperately clutch to what's left of the glorious summer-that-was . Swifts. Blackberries.

Myself, I don't fear the mist, at least not this first year. On the contrary, living in Texas, I learned to hate the sun.  So, what I'm really looking forward to is next summer, when the sun comes out of the mist and I, too, can experience that druggy Vitamin D high. And, also and even, I look forward to running around a year from now, panicked, like I am being chased by the very Hounds of very Hell, looting every last blackberry and Swift I can find.