Huckleberry pancakes were on the menu at Shadow Valley Family Camp this morning. Tonight we’re having huckleberry pie and huckleberry pizza for dessert. We’ll all enjoy this seasonal, regional treat thanks to the nimble fingers of sixteen Walker relations, ages 5 to 53.
Prairie girl and self-proclaimed wimp that I am, the idea of scrambling around on the sunny side of an Idaho mountain to pick enough huckleberries to feed 40 wasn’t appealing. But since I’m a dessert junkie, the promise of huckleberry pie moved this Mohammed to the mountain.
I didn’t complain as a I crept up the steep and extremely dangerous cliff everyone else treated like a little bit of nothing. I hiked over fallen logs and past bear poop (I’m not kidding. Beth who grew up in Idaho said that’s what it was) and found a particularly abundant huckleberry patch where I could plop down for a good long time. As I picked away, I overheard a conversation between two kids adopted from Russia four years ago.
“Aunt Beth,” Misha explained. “I used to pick berries in Russia with my mom. But we didn’t pick them to eat. We sold them for money. My mom picked berries very fast.”??“Did you see these, Meesh?” Victor asked. “They’re almost like the red berries we used to pick when we were at the orphanage. I wish we could find a whole bunch like that. They make really good jam.”
You know what? After after my little eavesdropping interlude, I was as hot and sweaty as ever, with bright purple huckleberry stains right down to my underwear. The bear poop still worried me and the thought of descending the dangerous cliff I’d ascended earlier still terrified me. But I was happy to be way out of my comfort zone, right where God wanted me to be: on the side of a mountain with sixteen sets of nimble fingers belonging to relatives, young and not-so-young, some of whom have endured much and taught me more.
Huckleberry heaven is a good place to be.
