Until a few weeks ago, I thought that pretty much everyone hunts for berries in the woods, or at least harvests them from some wild patch down by the river. I don’t remember the first time my parents took us up Smith Brook Road to hunt for huckleberries as a stop on the way home from Seattle. Neither do I remember the first time we got out of the car in a ferry line to pick the ripening blackberries next to the road. Any time I’m hiking near ripe huckleberries (or thimbleberries for that matter) a handful are bound to make it to my mouth. Berry hunting just is one of those rites of late summer.

A couple of weeks ago, Brian and I went on a short hike near Lake Wenatchee. I spotted a few bushes with ripe-looking berries, picked a couple, and, as I was about to pop them in my mouth, my New Jersey-native fiance exclaims “You’re not going to eat those are you?” I was incredulous. Of course I planned to eat a couple of ripe huckleberries, why not? It turns out, Brian didn’t go huckleberry hunting as a kid and was afraid I was about to eat poison berries. The thought that huckleberries could be poisonous had never crossed my mind. I ate them despite Brian’s concerns and had a few more, although they weren’t really ripe.

On Saturday, my dad and brother went huckleberry hunting to our family’s new favorite spot near Dirtyface Peak. They came back after five hours of hunting with less than half of the number of berries they harvested last year. They couldn’t explain why the harvest was so much less productive, although we speculated it was due to the unusually cool spring and summer. No matter, my dad made two pies from his berries and they were good.

I still haven’t done serious huckleberry hunting this year, and would like to, but I know it will have to be soon if I want to find anything at all. Maybe I’ll convince Brian that we should stop on our way to Auburn to see the Carlos Santana concert on Saturday.

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