Today, we attended Paradise’s annual Wild Blueberry Festival. This is the second year in a row that we have attended this event. Last year we shared one of their monstrous blueberry pie confections. This year we each got one. We drove Lakeshore Drive, passing Iroquois Point Lighthouse, where informational signs touted the region’s wealth in blueberries:

Over thousands of years, waves and wind built up large areas of sand along the shores of Whitefish Bay. Pine trees grow well on sandy soil and blueberries often thrive after pines are cut or burned. After last century’s clear cutting, blueberries became so abundant that a commercial market developed. Families would camp out and pick—sometimes for as long as three months. Middlemen bought the berries and shipped them by rail to cities like Chicago or Minneapolis, several boxcars full at a time. “I can remember berry-laden bushes as far as we could see, and smell again the piney, sandy, fruity fragrance of the warm air.” Margaret Bowman, recalling her childhood along Whitefish Bay in the early 1900s. Even Canadians would come over, if they had sailboats. They’d come across to pick berries. That was something in them days—berries, blueberries—loads and loads of blueberries.

This year was cooler than last, and the Paradise festival was quieter too. There were lots of booths, most were selling kitschy art, but some were selling food. I bought a jar of blueberry mustard. Then it was time for the main event—blueberry pie, with all of the fixings. We each had a slice of pie a la mode, smothered in blueberry sauce and then topped with whipped cream.