Cloudberry Fields Forever

As if cloudberries (Rubus chamaemorus) were not delicious enough, this year my partner and I tried our hand at crafting ‘cloudberry caramels’. They were indeed utterly delicious.

Every August we make the trek up the Dempster to convalesce, chill and commune with the cloudberries. This berry, part of the Rosaceae family, has been an important and celebrated berry in the life of Northerns for time immemorial. Cloudberry also goes by the common names of Salmon Berry and Bake Apple. The taste is sweet, bright, then a little, tiny, minuscule, bit putrid. Somehow…perfectly putrid.

Rubus chamaemorus’s habitat is the bog, in muskeg. Wet, northern, earth is its home. For such a challenging environment climatically and chemically, nature has gifted those who wander to these places or call these places home, a week or two of such bounty and brilliant sunset slopes filled with cloudberries fields.

To all of us who love and feel at home in the northern, wet, isolated places - may there be cloudberry fields forever. Cloudberry caramels in perpetuity is an attractive thought as well….