I suffer from huckleberry fever. It is a real condition that increases the heart rate, breathing rate and often ends in fantasy and halucinations. It is marked by an almost uncontrollable imagination of bigger, better and ever superlative patches of purple gold.
Episodes Huckleberry Fever are often brought on by tellings -
stories others relate that set the imagination running. It is quite similar to fish stories.A couple of weekends ago, however, my condition exploded into full-blown hysteria in the most innocent of encounters. We were camping at Dotted Bruin. (Names have been changed to protect my patches.)
The Wood Artist had us tramping about the forest in search of some grand natural phenomenon. (More on that later!) We had traversed a most annoying trail for about 1 1/2 miles through deep mud caused by pack horses/mules. Suddenly, there it was. The kind of huckleberry patch you only dream of.
They were everywhere. They were big. They were so heavy, the bushes were bowed with the weight of them! Wouldn't you know it! We didn't have our buckets! We ate to our hearts content and then emptied our water bottle and filled it (40 oz.) in about 15 -20 minutes. It was the stuff of fantasy! To get the full effect, click on the picture to the left.I wanted to go back with buckets, but couldn't convince Mr. Blueberry Eyes to muck through that much mud again!
A couple of days later, we found another patch. It was good, but didn't compare to the fantasy patch. Still, we picked about a gallon. Within two days it was sitting in pretty little jam jars. We have an agreement that we won't touch it until the first snowfall. Needless to say, I will likely never recover from the affliction. Berrily Yours, Nanette
Posts
2 comments:
It's a blessing that the bears of the north did not also have the same berrilicious ponderings!
Brenna
I have to confess I'm not exactly sure where you live Nannette but if you ever make it over to Bonners Ferry next summer, Uncle Ed has quite a few of your fantasy patches. This was a bumper crop year. He picked 5-6 gallons in about 8 hours over 2 days. The kids and I picked about a gallon and a half with him one of those days and like you, mine are now either in the freezer for huckleberry pancakes or in nice little jam jars as huckleberry-jalapeno chutney. Mom is the jam and syrup maker. Hope you can make it to first snow...we didn't :)
Post a Comment