Wild Grapes
high-roller purple
"I am picking wild grapes last year
in a field
dragging down great lianas of vine
tearing at 20 feet of heavy infinite purple..."
Al Purdy The Winemaker's Beat-Etude Wild Grape Wine (1968)
Ink making is also a kind of memory making. A way for the stuff of a place to become its message. I grew up at the end of a road just past Perth Road Village. A really small town named after a road that led to a not-quite-as-small town. I remember materials. The beach made of snail shells on Draper Lake. Creosote smell of railway ties in the sun. Rust. Old children’s books in the barn. I remember near the railroad track you could sometimes find a huge white puffball mushroom back in the woods. I would sometimes travel in my Papa's backpack looking out past his big black beard. My mother taught me how to look for the hickory nuts under the shaggy-barked hickory tree. My father threw me a puffball mushroom as big a beachball and I didn't catch it and it broke into tiny glowing white pieces on the dark ground. Shards of the moon. Past the carboniferous horsetail ferns growing beside the railway track on the way to Harrowsmith. Deeper there were ropey old vines of wild grapes swinging 50 feet into the air. Tiny black-purple grapes, leaves going yellow in the fall. I believed in their magic. My hands were stained purple.
This year I finally found the fox grapes in parking lot of a casino off Old Weston Road. It was raining and cold and I was waiting to get winter tires changed and the lot was empty except for a cop car tucked into the far corner beside the the fence. There were thousands of perfect dark purple spheres in clusters under the the yellowing leaves woven through the chain link fence and I collected them until my fingers were numb. At home I squeezed the juice cold and straight into 4 little glass bottles and the colour was rich and royal and I remembered that the $500 denomination (and first of the high roller) casino chip is traditionally purple.
Also please do spread the word. And comment in the comments. And stay wild. Happy all souls. JL
I have wild grapes in the woods behind my home and I waited patiently till they were ripe. I was only able to get a small bunch as once again foiled by the birds flying through on their way south.
This year I found wild grapes growing on Belle Isle in Detroit, the Northeast side of the island right along the shore, where I can see Canada (Hi Jason!). It's my favorite place on the island: a marble lighthouse, a field of milkweed, water always close. I made ink out of fruit after picking some that was growing high up, draped like holiday lights on nearby trees, and shared it with a bunch of new ink makers who fell in love quickly with the color. A week later, I went back to pick some more but they were gone ( I think the birds were hungry). But yesterday I went on a run in the rain in the city and I saw them growing on a fence. Color has a way of finding you when you least expect it.