“There’s nothing…absolutely nothing…half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats.” —Kenneth Grahame

On the river with our friends, we take to boats small and large. Sometimes we congregate on Blackberry Island, an overgrown sandbar, really, covered with blackberry brambles. The children grab floating objects—tubes, rafts, noodles—and plunge into the cool water. The men mess around with the boats. We women pick berries.

Chatting as we bend over the bushes, our bare backs bake in the sun like beached river rocks. The big boys toss sticks into the water for the dogs, who splash into the river and return to shake clear, cool water over our sun-drenched backs. We squeal and laugh and pop blackberries into our mouths. Crushing the berries against the roof of my mouth with my tongue, I feel drunk on the juice trickling down my throat.

After we have all eaten berries till our lips and hands turn blue, we stash bags of berries for later and lie on towels in the dappled shade. With a damp dog flopped against my side and a damp child curled in the crook of my arm, I feel the coursing river inside me, swirling into eddies without beginning or end, and I weep with the exquisite beauty of life. Weep a river. Indeed, there is nothing half so much worth doing as this.