I nominate Bill McNamara, 54, as Michigan’s champion wild blueberry picker.

Bill, a Newberry land surveyor, picks 200 quarts (250 this August—a banner year) of wild blueberries per year. They are not for sale. He gives them to elderly and handicapped folks who can’t do their own picking.

“I have been berry picking since I was four years old. I do it in my spare time because it relaxes me with all the solitude and wonders of the woods,” Bill said.

This past berry season, however, left him with a deep sadness because he lost his special berry-picking buddy, a wild spruce hen.

“One day a couple of years ago, I was berry picking when a male spruce hen came walking up close to me. I talked to him and he came closer and even picked berries next to my hand. As time passed, we became friends and he let me hold him in my arms. Each day as I arrived and parked my truck, I would bang a pan a little and start picking. Soon, he would come and just hang around with me until I was ready to leave. This year, he did not show up. I suppose a coyote got him. It put a real sadness on me, but I still have wonderful memories of that bird. I miss him a lot,” Bill said.

Bill and his wife, Amy, have been married 32 years. They have two boys and a girl. Amy has been a nurse for 22 years, and she says Bill’s blueberry pancakes are a specialty at their family reunion.

Bill’s favorite blueberry patches are at Paradise, known for many years as the wild blueberry capital of Michigan.

Paradise celebrated its 27th Annual Blueberry Festival this August, and the town swelled with over 5,000 visitors, eager to enjoy pie and ice cream, blueberry brunches, about 100 arts and crafts exhibits, and a daily spate of entertainment by musicians, jugglers, magic acts, and more.

Tracy Matodobra, owner of the Paradise True Value Hardware, is a long-time leader of the blueberry festival.

“Blueberry picking has been a very big thing in Paradise since the 1920s,” she said. “After all the great white pine forests were harvested here from 1880 to about 1920, and some forest fires later, the blueberry plains became so popular that more than 1,500 workers came here annually to help harvest the berries. All that was before there were commercial berry farms. Ships landed here on the Lake Superior shore to haul our berries to Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo and more,” she said.

All that activity slacked off in the 1940s, during World War II when the labor force was down.

While the blueberry crop is usually pretty good most years, there are occasional times when frost and other weather conditions shorten the crop and Paradise folks have to buy berries from other sources to meet the festival’s hungry demand. Hordes of Paradise and Whitefish Township volunteers join in to work the three-day event, and profits go for community betterment.

There are times when my blindness pays off. Because of that handicap, Bill McNamara brought me four quarts of wild blueberries in August.

Wow! What a treat.