"There was a fascination about picking cranberries like nothing else.  The hard shining berries did not mush in your hand.  Their brilliant scarlet color made them easy to see and, even though in beginning each new year one had to go through a period of creaking back and knees, it soon wore off and, to many, pickers exhilaration succeeded.  I know of no more restful spot, unless one is picking in competition or from necessity, when any task, regardless of conditions, becomes hard work.  If a person can take time, relax when tired, and pick, more or less as a pastime, a bog can return great dividends other than fruit.  The very bog odor -- a fragrance really -- is like no other.  It comes, very likely, from the turf, without which a bog would not be a bog but just some mucky spot in the swamp.  Our Cape bogs are something of which to be proud, with their early fall coloring an extra asset.......Now, I understand, much of the harvesting is done by machinery and the poetry has gone from the work."