Fort Simpson (Aug 22/03) - Florence Isiah remembers what a happy occasion it was when her mother would give her a quarter-cup of berries as a little girl.

As an adult, she gathers the flavourful fruit for herself. Isiah hasn't been out picking yet this year -- she missed her beloved strawberries earlier this summer -- but she said she plans to get some cranberries in the fall.

She knows where the picking is good "but I'm not telling," she laughed.

"It's better when there's poplars and jack pines (around)," Isiah advised.

She uses the berries in muffins, pies, bannock and jams.

Trout Lake's Marilyn Lomen has been picking berries since she was a girl. She doesn't need any recipes to enjoy them, she noted.

"Eating them plain is good. There's a lot of vitamins in there," said Lomen, who this summer collected two buckets full of blueberries, her favourite. "Some of them I freeze for later use during the winter. Some I just give them away to elders."

Like Isiah, Harriet Geddes hasn't been beating the bushes yet this season, but she too has cranberries on her mind come September.

She likes to cook them and rosehips in jellies and jams, she said. She also uses the leaves to make tea.

"I learned all that stuff from my grandmother and my aunt," said Geddes, who lives in Fort Providence.

"I was brought up on the land. We had to use whatever there is."

She added that tourists have remarked how amazing it is to see strawberry bushes growing in the wild, whereas they have to plant them down south.

North or south, fending off the parasitic black flies and mosquitoes in the bush is often a challenge, but it's easier on a breezy day, Geddes noted.

Of greater concern than the pesky mosquitoes are the voracious black bears, which are also in the woods scavenging for berries.

Isiah spotted one in a clearing while picking berries two summers ago.

"It was just hanging around so we took off," she said.