Huckleberry Hell?

If you go out picking huckleberries and return home without bruises, small cuts, or scrapes, you are probably not a serious berry picker.  Real honest-to-goodness huckleberry picking is like participating in a demolition derby without the cars.  It’s you charging against steep inclines, holes, loose rocks, sharp sticks, and deadfall.

The best berries, by some cruel trick of nature or fate, tend to flourish in the deepest crosshatch of fallen trees or at the edge of the steepest incline.

If you want choice berries, you must go there.

On occasion you may be required to literally swim through a thick patch of small spruce, alder, or stick willow.  You must crawl under snags, clamber over huge logs, and climb up and down steep embankments.

People traps abound.

Sticks fly back at you as you snap dead branches out of your immediate path.  Unexpected holes lie hidden under the grasses and forbs.  Sharp points from broken branches extend along the lengths of downed trees and amid slash on the forest floor.

But also there: gorgeous huckleberries.

The other day, I returned from a trip to the huckleberry patch with several serious scrapes on my shin and countless small cuts on my arms.  At one point, while traversing a tangle of blowdown trees, I caught my leg between a pair of fallen lodgepole and I fell forward.  That one produced the biggest scrape on my shin.  Fortunately, I did not spill a single berry from the gallon jug strapped alongside the bear spray on my belt.

That’s another thing: bears.  We often seek berries in known grizzly country.  While picking berries alongside one of my buddies, we got to talking about bears.  “I tend to keep my head down as I’m moving around,” I said. “I want to find berries and need to watch my step.  But I still stop now and again to scan around for bears.”

“Same here,” my buddy responded.  “But I’m actually more afraid I’m gonna bust my ass in here or trip and impale myself on a stick than I am afraid of bears.”

“Agree.”

Finally, I don’t want to leave you standing here at the end my blog with nothing to show but scrapes and bruises.  Huckleberry picking is a beautiful event.  My favorite.  The berries grow only in lovely forests and mountains.  At times, the piercing, unique smell of huckleberries will draw you into a thick berry patch and hold you as might an ancient spell.  You can expect butterflies and songbirds in your periphery, soft wind through tall trees, maybe elk or deer.  You will strike clear mountain streams that have produced smooth, heart-shaped stones you can fish from the stream bottom and take home.

And from the huckleberry patch you take huckleberries and deep red stains on your fingers.

Posted are a few photographs I captured in the huckleberry patch with my smarter-than-me-phone.

--Mitchell Hegman