When I crush the first raspberry of summer with my lips, the sweet and sour tang spreading inside my mouth, harnessing my tongue with joy, I have a religious experience. I am diffused in time and yet in perfect sync with my senses there, for a second. I feel what my yoga-loving friend means when she preaches to me the sacred "carpe diem" tattooed on her forearm. 

The chosen berry bursts in my mouth. If it’s the right kind of berry, you can taste the sunlight that fed it. It is not your run-of-the-mill berry, picked off the grocery store's neat piles of berry bounty. The chilled fruit gently herded by the sellers at pop-up county fairs is closer, but still not it. My holy grail of a raspberry lurks in my mother's dacha garden. 

There's a sensual prelude to this tasting, too. There has to be; good things cannot be rushed. It is a scorching afternoon, the air is dense and loaded with the slightly sour undertone of over-ripe apricots and fallen cherries. The smell mingles with the freshness brought by the Dnipro river running close by and in the reigning queen of all scents of the south: the warm, tired steppe studded by the wildflowers of Khortytsya island. 

A raspberry bush is no ordinary plant. It's modest and prickly, so you must court it gently. In passing a line of raspberry bushes, you might think that it is, perhaps, too early to dig into the dense jungle of these shadow-loving plants. Knowing when and how to look for their fruit is an art. 

Imagine yourself in a sun-drenched garden in the southeast of Ukraine. There's no wind. You wish there were. You crave relief from the stillness of the grass surrounding you. The shadows are short, unlike the days you find yourself smack in the middle of. Your head is heavy, and your palm, with the thinnest overcoat of perspiration on it, gently strokes the raspberry bushes. 

You kneel in front of the chosen plant. There it is, a plump pyramid of tiny blood-colored beads. The berry is soft and fragile on your open palm, like the head of a baby bird. Its skin is matte and dry; you can almost feel the impatience of flavor under its suede surface, ready to burst and excite your taste buds. And now, the best part, the crescendo: you touch it with your lips and feel its divine warmth. This raspberry was gulping in the clear July sunlight just a second ago, and now it's giving it all up to your hungry eyes, nose, and mouth. 

That first berry can make or break the whole season for me. When I close my eyes and taste that fruit, kneeled and half concealed between the haphazard rows of raspberry bushes, I feel grounded, leveled, complete. The pale-green grass that reaches for miles south, north, east, and west from my heated body, entirely lost in the raspberry whirlpool, drinks up the same juices from the greasy rich soil that nurtures my roots. That first raspberry of summer tastes of homecoming to me.

Now, if you wanted to stretch the summer into more than a second, you'd have to go for mountain blackberries. They don't grow in the home I was born into—not in the south—but they grow in the place my elastic heart has learned to reach toward as I begin to comprehend how big my home really is. 

Keen eyes, strong legs, and a lot of patience are the essentials to pack for the blackberry hunt. From my sun-quenched Cossack land, it takes a full day of journey to the northwest to reach the dampest place in Ukraine in August. Rain, treacherous and gushing, can catch you off-guard before you even set foot on the rising back of Carpathia. At least, that's how I remember my first expedition to the too-green Persian carpet of meadows framed by ice-cold rivers, roaring and seductive in the blithe sun of the late summer. 

I remember noting the heavy clouds that crowded the sky and flew by faster than my teenage years, and thinking that not bringing a raincoat was a mistake. The sky opened, and it poured on and on as I ascended the mountain. Having not yet developed a taste for gloomy forests, I mostly looked where I stepped. In my mind, I traveled across the country to my relaxed body, dry and safely stretched out in the hammock in the pear garden behind the rows and rows of raspberries. 

Finally, tall conifers, with cracked dark-brown bark, wet with rain rushing down to the cushion of last year's needles, let in some dull grey light that made each droplet of rain sparkle on the ground. The colossal trunks became thicker, tree by tree, and finally opened up on a broad pasture that spilled over the mountain slope. Stumpy shrubs speckled the tall grass as far as the eye could see. They stood upright and barely reached to my weary knees. Each proud branch was loaded with tiny globes of fruit huddled close together. 

For these berries, you have to bow, not kneel. Locals lovingly call them "Yafyna," a name very close to the name of the Greek goddess of war and reason. High up among the clouds, this berry is a treasure hard-won if you want to taste it right. Of course, you can always cheat and purchase a plastic cup of yafynas dusted with sugar and accompanied by a generous spoonful of sour cream from local berry pickers. Still, you'll only get the abridgement of the berry flavor that way. 

If you choose or—like me in my late teens—are forced by your mother to climb the steps to the blackberry temple, you'll be rewarded by an erratic bouquet of feelings that complement the berry's taste. It's a mixture of your sweat, the tired ruminations in your shoulders and legs, the mountain rain, dewed up on the cobalt spheres, and the herbal breath of western Ukrainian winds that envelop you almost violently in their wet shrouds. 

The blackberries crowd your greedy palms, and after an appreciative beat you inhale several at once. The little globes pop like fish roe between your jaws as soon as you close your mouth, drowning your teeth in tangy, sweet juice. The cool undertone of their taste inhabits you completely. It takes off your heavy backpack and rewards you with a relief welcomed by your body like a long-lost friend. 

When your hands and lips are tired of the pick-and-eat ritual, lay yourself down on the wet, soft grass next to me. Our eyes will pierce the glassy sky's hard surface as we begin to muse on the taste we just experienced. Connecting the dots, we’ll speak of the similarity between the berries—rasp and black. However distinct and distant, they share one significant element of taste, I think. Not the sweet or the sour tone, but an aftertaste. The moment of stillness in the constant torrent of water. From my body filled with blood, sweat, tears, and saliva to rivers, lakes, and creeks slashing my land throughout. 

The proper berry-tasting fulfills a promise to connect your roots to the roots of the world. Carpe diem.