The Huckleberry Place

This is mine: the mountain place amid crosshatch timber where pine spurs dismantle the sunlight and then scatter the remaining fragments as precious jewels against the understory.  Thimbleberry, queen’s cup, and fireweed grow on the fringe of the mountain place, but the ages have gathered huckleberries at the center of a steeply-sided dale.  The green leaves of the berry bushes knit fine wishbones above the deadfall and the berries themselves display full on these, the warmest days of summer.

There is nothing that compares to a huckleberry.  They are a singular thing, like the moon, but on a different scale—sometimes smaller, but sometimes bigger in my thinking.  The color of the berries ranges from burgundy to ghost-blue and the taste of the best berries might vary from earthy-sugar-cube to dry-red-wine.  The scent of huckleberries is powerful: sweet, but, at the same time, far too big and vital for sweet.  As you take in the scent, you are reminded of first rain, of waterfalls and moss.

And there is something else.  The huckleberry place is deep in the woods where the few sounds that penetrate are either hollowed or without edge.  In the huckleberry place, I am capable of forgiving all transgressions against me.   I can hold softly all crimes of passion.  Dreaming is easy as I harvest the berries.  Sometimes, all of the lost ones are with me again.  Sometimes, I am alone and drifting through the forest.  I am a color.  I am a sound.  I am a final element.

When the berries are ripe—when I am harvesting—I am ancient once more.

A photograph  I captured yesterday near “The Huckleberry Place.”

--Mitchell Hegman