COMMENT: Hucked

By Adrian Barnes

Among all the ways in which we gather fruits and berries, huckleberry picking stands alone as a somewhat perverse pursuit. Apple picking is wholesome and not much more challenging in an orchard than when grabbing a bagful in the produce aisle at the grocery store. Cherry picking is good clean fun, easy either with or without a cherry picker. The acquisition of elderberries? Laughably simple. But huckleberries? Huckleberries are harsh mistresses.

The sins associated with huckleberries are both legion and legend. They breed mistrust and jealousy in the community as friends and neighbours skulk off to their secret patches. They foster pride as locals open their freezers in the dead of winter to produce ziploc bags packed with stolen summer magic. They inculcate lust as we lay awake on sweltering nights, craving the berries’ sweet, earthy tang.

It’s a perverse pastime in that a good deal of the pleasure we take from these elusive little berries comes from the difficulty we face in gathering them. Pleasure from pain--from scratched ankles, sunburned necks, and stained fingers. An odd alchemy.

All this sin and perversity comes from a very specific characteristic of the huckleberry--its scarcity. Huckleberries only grow in very specific conditions--typically on east-facing slopes that receive a mixture of sun and shade. And the huckleberry is not domesticable. One of this plant’s great charms is that it dwells beyond the world of money--a world that’s so pervasive nowadays that we tend to think of the realm of filthy lucre AS the world. In an age where Stephen Harper would like to monetarize water (yes, water!) the huckleberry stands as rare evidence that money and the world are, in fact, two different things.

You can’t buy these berries commercially. The closest thing you’ll ever see to a huckleberry economy is the occasional entrepreneurial kid who sells a yogurt containerful or two at a farmer’s market.

Value comes from scarcity. No one values the poor dandelion because it's everywhere. And yet the dandelion is a truly gorgeous flower, each one a tiny, blinding sun and if you had to climb a mountain to find one, people would gladly pay $10 for a bunch then proudly display them on their coffee tables. But try telling that to my neighbours.

This summer, however, all the rules have changed.

If value lies in scarcity, huckleberries are a devalued currency this season. This summer, in fact, the hucklebuck has collapsed. The torrents of rain we endured this spring have resulted in a huckleberry crop, the likes of which I’ve never seen in 16 years of residence in the West Kootenay. I’ve biked up Tamarac and seen patches so dense that I’ve been able to sit in one spot and pick for ten solid minutes. I’ve hiked up Miner’s and been rewarded with a couple of pounds of ripe berries right at the side of that heavily-used trail. But nothing prepared me for what I found yesterday at the top of Red. The bushes up there are exposed and low to the ground, but the density and the size of the berries on display was astounding. More like blueberries than huckleberries in size. More like grapes in terms of density. In an hour I picked over three pounds, almost filling a sawn-off 4 litre milk jug.

Consequently, the traditional sins associated with huckleberry lust are in abeyance this season. No need to hide from your neighbours--there are plenty for everyone out there. No need to fall prey to an excess of pride--a toddler can fill a bucket this summer. And no need to writhe in thwarted lust--eat ‘em till you’re sick. No one will judge you.

That said, new sins are lurking beneath the small, oval leaves. Sloth, for one. There’s not a lot of merit in just flopping onto the ground and letting the berries tumble into your bucket and your mouth. Gluttony is another. I’ve seen plenty of beer bellies in my life, but never a hucklebelly. That may change by the time I try to put on my work slacks come September. Don’t believe me? Check out the gut on your local bear next time you see one. What do you think they subsist on?

If this all sounds a little ominous, don’t fret. This year’s weird abundance is just a fluke. Etymologically, ‘fluke’ refers to an event as rare as the sighting of a whale’s tale--rare indeed up here in the Interior. Next year we’ll be back to scarcity and our more traditional failings.

In the final estimation, it seems that the huckleberry is a breeder of sin in both lean years and bountiful ones. So what to do?

I have a plan designed to take abundance and distill it back into scarcity and, thereby, value.

How? By making my first-ever batch of huckleberry wine. Even in a summer like this, the 16 pounds of berries required for a five gallon batch of wine aren’t easy to come by. Then there’s the months spent on the vintner’s rack, the bottling, the waiting. And finally, when I open that first bottle, sometime in 2014, what will I feel?

Why pride, of course. Oh well. I guess I’m just hucked no matter how you look at it.

Adrian Barnes is the editor of the Rossland Telegraph and president of Lone Sheep Publishing.