Looking out my Backdoor: Felled by A blackberry bramble

I certainly never expected to spend an afternoon in the emergency room of the local hospital on my holiday with my son and granddaughter. Just an innocent scratch, I tried to tell myself.

Lexi and I, along with Deckard the Dog, had walked the newly-hacked trail to the “Fort” in the woods, constructed by Lexi’s grandpa and father. If you’ve never been around wild blackberries, you need to know, the vines are indestructible.

Left to grow uninhibited, blackberry brambles will eventually push out the holly, salal, ferns and all other woods growth. Wild vines can and do take down entire buildings, including abandoned barns and houses. I’ve seen it.

When I first moved to Washington back in the early ’80s, I didn’t understand this phenomenon. I was appalled when I saw my neighbor out hacking away blackberry bushes at the edge of his yard. Coming from Montana, where chokecherries, a poor excuse for fruit, requiring extreme measures to harvest and use, are revered, I learned any fruit is sacred and blackberries are rare treasures.

The following year, and every year thereafter, in the spring and again, in the fall, after I had picked all the plump juicy berries I wanted for pies and jellies, machete in hand, I hacked the vines into pseudo submission. Blackberries always win.

So even though Ben had cleared the path through the woods to the Fort, errant vines lurked. As I followed, Lexi ran ahead along the uneven ground, with Deckard tugging on his rope in my left hand and my cane for balance in my right hand. An errant blackberry vine whipped out and sliced through the back of my calf.

My leg was bloody but I was on a mission so paid no attention. Lexi gave me the grand treehouse tour, we poked around the base of the tree a while, then returned home. After I cleaned my messy leg, I considered I might need stitches but could probably get by without them. What’s one more scar? I smeared Bag Balm, my go-to cure-all, on my leg and promptly ignored what was obviously not a mortal wound.

Three days later, while having coffee with Kathy Currie and Cass Quinn, friends from my theatre days, Kathy noticed my cut leg with an expression of horror. Remember, this thing is on the back of my calf, not terribly painful, out of sight, out of mind. I twisted around to look. Ewww. My leg sported a nasty purple gash, discolored an inch around the edges of the actual cut.

My son Ben, who’d worked several years in nursing homes when younger, cleaned the cut, disinfected a needle and broke through the crust, expressed the discharge, and smeared on an antibiotic cream, hoping for the best. By this time my leg looked as though it were being eaten from the inside out.

On the second day of home treatment, Ben and I looked at my leg, looked at each other, and without another word, climbed into the car and took my infected leg to the Emergency Room at Harrison Hospital. I’m terrified of infections with good reason. I have a prosthetic knee on one leg and prosthetic hip on the other.

That’s why I’m taking a horse-pill antibiotic, my mouth tastes like metal, food turns my stomach and I must rise up in the middle of the night to swallow another pill, rigidly adhering to the doctor’s precise instructions.

The good news is the pills work. Yes, I should have gone in for stitches. I’ll add one more scar to my growing collection.

Now, please understand I’ll probably not act on impulse. I’ve never been one to consider tattoos. I can admire good tattoo work on you but have never been tempted to deliberately jab needles into my own skin. However, my legs are criss-crossed with scars.

Recently I’ve thought about creating a “roadmap” tattoo, utilizing my natural “lay of the land”, complete with scars, dips and doodles. Towns along the “route.” Mountains and valleys. Perhaps add a lake here and a railroad track there. I could create an entire mythical country from my natural scars of life lived.

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Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com. Email [email protected].