Huckleberry Season

The huckleberries are on! These wild, sweet berries define living in the Rockies for many. I love eating huckleberries but I love picking them more. Moving slowly from bush to bush I experience the woods much more intimately than when I'm hiking. Life's chatter drops away and I feel renewed. The Japanese call this "forest bathing."

There are twelve species of huckleberries (Vaccinium spp.) in the Rocky Mountains. Members of the Heath Family, they grow from 3,500 feet up to about 7,000 feet elevation. Huckleberries like partially shaded slopes and are important colonizers of burned areas and some tribes used fire to maintain healthy huckleberry patches.

Scientist Nellie Stark has determined that lower elevation huckleberries have bumper crops every ten years, mid elevation every six and high elevation every year. But no matter what elevation, if you look hard enough, you'll find berries.

High in Vitamin C, antioxidants and energy, huckleberries were such an important food for Native Americans that they performed ceremonies in their honor each year and preserved the fruit by drying. White settlers canned their huckleberries. Before there were lots of roads and access was more difficult, major huckleberry-picking camps were set up and pickers stayed for weeks.

Huckleberries may define the Rocky Mountains for many people but they define survival for bears, who rely on huckleberries to fatten up for winter hibernation. In late summer, huckleberries constitute up to a third of bears' diets. Their deep blue scat full of huckleberry leaves is definitive proof.

Bears and berry picking might seem risky, but bears' sense of smell is two hundred times more sensitive than ours and they generally go the other way when they smell us. Nevertheless, it is wise to be aware. It's well worth the effort!

To learn more or to hike with Randi go to http://www.ihiketowrite.com and http://www.fourseasonforays.com