Iz your bottom covered?

One of the classic lines of my own private Idaho Huckleberry history was uttered by my mother many many times when we were little urchins in the mountain berry patches along the road, now leading to Schweitzer Mountain Resort or even sometimes clear up past McCormick Meadows on Baldy Mountain.

"Is your bottom covered?" she would ask the bunch of us while plucking away berries from her bush just a short distance away. Of course, the whole forest heard because, of course, sounds carry a lot better out there in that place where people still haven't figured out how to answer the question, "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

That ponderance ranks right up there with the chickens and their road crossings.

Well, Mother's pondering of whether our bottoms were covered confused me back in those days. I'm kinda one dimensional. Some folks might call it "anal," and for this topic, it's perfect. I would simply turn around look at my rear end and see that, indeed, my pants were still there and yell back, "Mine is."

It was years later that it dawned on "dumb older me" that she meant the bottom of my berry bucket. And, it was even years later that I understood the term "Cover Your Ass." For all those early years in the huckleberry patch, I thought mine was doing quite fine, thank you.

Well, yesterday if my mother had been with us up there beneath Lunch Peak in the breath-taking Cabinet Mountains while we were picking our share of this year's bountiful crop of huckleberries and if she had asked early on in the picking if my bottom was covered, I could have had a new twist on how to respond.

"Mine is," I could report to her, "and it's all purple.

Yup, before enough berries had landed in the bottom of my bucket for the age-old huckleberry-picking milestone, I had sat smack dab in the middle of a bush loaded down with juice-filled purple berries, and upon getting up from that spot to head to the car for our next huckleberrying/geocaching stop, I could feel telltale wetness back there on my rear end.

And, there was enough hints of several stains that I was wishing for something to "CYA" in case anybody came driving down the road to see that I had turned into an Appaloosa. Yup, they like those spots on Appaloosa butts, but for 62-year-old women, purple splotches on the butt don't look so pleasing.

"Oh well," I thought. "I'll do just like I did back at Sandpoint Junior High when I didn't want the other 600 students at the school to know I was the lone seventh-grade sap who got sent to school with seamed nylons. I just walked backward a lot. I also figured up there in the Lunch Peak area there wouldn't be too many people passing by.

I figured wrong. Lunch Peak area was crawling with "TURists," as Bill calls 'em. So, I had to sit and choose carefully my times for walking down the road. We saw people on 4-wheelers, motorcycles and in cars all along the way.

We even got a taste of snobbish, unfriendly attitudes from two out-of-state visitors while driving the rough last stretch of road leading to Lunch Peak.

To say the road is rough understates the situation significantly. Big sharp rocks, gullies and huge holes keep drivers alert while maneuvering that segment, and so when the overzealous outsiders showed up on my tail (the car, not the purple bottom) and wasted no time passing me, I formed an opinion.

Then, when we saw them up at the lookout and I commented on their Border Collie and that we had two in the car, he almost started telling me not to let them out, but he thought twice and said, "I guess they can play." The dogs all sniffed each other and went on about their business.

Usually when you meet other Border Collie owners, there's instant friendship. These people wanted no part of canine/human camaraderie or even an institutional "Hi, how are ya?" interchange.

It always strikes me as odd that when we're in the remotest of places, where God has bestowed supreme beauty that people can't shed their snobbery and enjoy sharing the moments.

Lunch Peak is hardly a place where anyone's gonna rob you, accost you or bring you any form of misery-------except maybe unfriendly souls, I guess. It's too bad that such attitudes are seeping into our area.

All along the way, everyone else was nice, considerate and generous with their friendly waves and quick visits. In fact, we saw one of my photography instructors, Clarence "Tyke" Van Dellen. Clarence used to teach photography for North Idaho College. He and his wife Linda were out with family members enjoying the day. When I saw them coming, I remained seated and picking alongside the road where the bushes had huge berries.

Wasn't gonna let them see my purple butt.

We had a nice conversation about 88-year-old mothers living on their farms. Linda's the same age as I. She hails from Culdesac, and her mother drives a 4-wheeler around her place while mine drives a golf cart.

Bill and I picked a little over a gallon of berries, and I had to pry myself away from our spot, which would not need to be kept secret during this year of ubiquitous berries. Had daylight lasted a bit longer, I'm sure we would have picked another hour or two. It was getting late, though, and we had a bumpy road to drive back down off the mountain.

Since arriving at their new home, those huckleberries have gone on ice cream last night and into pancake batter this morning. Later today some are gonna end up cobbled for dinner tonight.

I'm still trying to figure out what besides SHOUT can get those purple stains off the bottom of my jeans. Any ideas?