adventures in huckelberry

the first rule of huckleberry picking in Idaho is don't talk about huckleberry picking.


So, this summer I've been a bit fanatical about fruit. I've had friends give me lbs of their apples, blackberries, tomatoes etc. I've been turning them into canned goods to sell so I can raise money for a missions trip 2016. So when we were on holiday in the mountains of Idaho this summer I was thrilled to find out the huckleberrys were ripe. All I need to do was find some & jam them.

Idaho, um beautiful!, has several small communities throughout it's mountains. The particular one we visited has friendly faces, hardworking hands & weathered wisdom.  I've been able to spend a bit of my time in this same community from the time I was little. But being at a community & being in a community... they are two different things.

'so where do you find these huckleberries?'  Seems like an acceptable question. But in truth I was asking a question that challenged decades of family secrecy. Most people knew where to find them - as their freezers were full of frozen huckleberries from last years pickings. But getting someone to share this information was quite another affair. Others may have been deterred, but I was determined.

So where do you find huckleberries?
To the honest, this question met silent smiles.
The tactful answered 'oh I don't know, but I know where you can find a great huckleberry shake or pie'
The semi helpful informed me that they were somewhere within the 40 acre circumference - of rugged mountain brush.

My favorite was the helpful smile with detailed instructions to where to find this treasure. 'It's our family secret' she said. She explained that her family wasn't coming up to pick this year, so she might as well share. 'do you have a bucket? because there are piles of them'. Two locations she gave me. I went to the airfield first. After 1 1/2 hours I thought perhaps I missed them. The next set of instructions led me straight to the town dump. 'piles of them' echoed in my ears.

Yes, being at a community is a lot different than being in a community. we all have our valued commodities that we are deeply petrified to share - friendship, identity, attention, leadership, wisdom, the top seat at the table. Almost every community can find itself being stingy in one regard or another. How are you with your commodities? are you afraid they will run out? do you share or do you fear? See, someone always knows when they are not truly let in. No amount of polite tact can make up for that.  It's time to forsake the misplaced value & return it to the stranger & the outsider.

So how did my huckleberry journey end? I couldn't really say. But I do have 2 jars of homemade huckleberry jam that I am selling to fund a missions trip in 2016. Interested?