As yet, the story below is incomplete and unedited. Last time I made any changes was 2004.

The draft shows several possible anecdotes to be added. It seemed appropriate to share today since Bill and I embarked on our first huckleberry adventure of 2020 yesterday.

The facts: up Snow Creek Road, west of Bonners Ferry, eventually finding a big patch along with 8 million mosquitoes on a branch of the Snow Creek Road.

Three dousings of Cutter spray, followed by the green can with deadly Deet allowed us enough time to pick half a gallon of purple gold.

One observation: the Pandemic has brought out a whole new population of berry pickers.

Twas a bit of a Grand Central Station up there, and we didn't even go very far up the road, just a ways past Snow Falls.

We may have felt a little arrogant about finding our patch as the pickers we saw were working on bushes with itsy bitsy, teeny weeny berries with an abundance of "social distance" on the bushes.

Veteran berry pickers know not to waste their time in such places.

In our eventual patch, the berries weren't small; they weren't big, but they were very plentiful, only to be outnumbered by those hungry mosquitoes.

Anyway, any huckleberry adventure conjures of huckleberry adventures of times past, so I'm gonna shut up and leave you with this story. Maybe if the Pandemic keeps up, I'll finish it one of these days.

Hope you enjoy----and please remember: UNEDITED. That gives me a disclaimer for glitches. Happy Monday.

Huckleberry Sundays

I know why Dave Oliveria calls his Monday morning “gotcha” column “Huckleberries.” His weekly award-winning feature in the Spokesman-Review “Idaho Handle” often zaps unsuspecting but deserving souls for blatant stupidity in the public arena. The columnist’s prickly approach can bite to the core and test the mettle of the thickest skinned notables in the Idaho Panhandle.

I know the feeling, but fortunately not through the pen of Oliveria. The closest thing to a print-media huckleberry attack that I’ve encountered appeared in the “Close to Home” column when Cynthia Taggart let area readers know that someone had a movement afoot to name streets after local authors. She suggested that Sandpoint planners consider having a “Marianne Love Lane.” Hmmmm.

Since nobody has called to verify the correct spelling of my name, I’m feeling comfortable that I’ll never reach the road ranks of such local notables as the Roops, the Goobys or even Helen Thompson out there in Wrencoe.

My personal huckleberry encounters have actually occurred in the rugged back hills of Northern Idaho, usually on Sunday afternoons. Still, I’ve known the feeling of blatant stupidity, prickly attacks and physical afronts to my thin skin. I’ve also dealt with annoying flies, bees, ants and other unknown critters.

In fact, I’ve danced with ants in my pants and through plenty of clumsy footwork, have developed a new brand of tennyrunner for Nike to make its next billion: it’s called the sidehill gouger sneaker and it performs best when slipping and sliding along bushy but sandy mountainsides.

In my quest for purple gold with an empty bucket, I’ve tested my mettle and have done just about everything there is that’s stupid just to get to a good huckleberry patch.

A good huckleberry patch from my perspective may present higher expectations than most. In fact, I’ve often noticed on past excursions that my companions seem satisfied to pick the first bush that comes along while I can remain in the prowl for hours.

A good huckleberry patch should be located in the shade where the pesky flying critters don’t seem so eager to suck on sweaty skin. Berry bushes must be tall enough to exclude the need for bending over, unless they happen to be strategically located along a lengthy moss-covered log where one can scoot along while working.

Before I’ll give them my time of day, the bushes must also be loaded down with at least 1,000 plump, cherry-like berries per limb. When I sit down or even stand with my bucket, the old farm girl in me wants to be able milk the berries with both hands and watch them drop into the waiting container like marbles flowing from a bag. Nothing less will do.

Almost 50 years of searching for the perfect berry patch---many times the hard way---has turned me into a rather particular sort who hates to waste time literally sweating over the small stuff. I wasn’t always an efficient huckleberry hunter. In fact, I doubt that my first-ever experience elicited much more than 14 shriveled up berries sharing space with a bucketful of nondescript twigs.

My introduction to this July-August North Idaho outdoor sport came at an early age, shortly after Mother married my stepfather, Harold Tibbs, sealing the subsequent lifelong reference to my parents as “Mother and Harold.” Readers of earlier books may recall that more than simple romance united the couple. Harold’s need for land where his cattle could graze and Mother’s desire to have a tractor to till her land added a practical supplement to their admiration for one another.

Mother owned 40 acres; Harold drove a Ford tractor. The tractor and its accessories transformed the land, and as years passed, the ever-increasing fertility of the land sustained both cattle and horses.

Harold put his tractor to lots of uses as he plowed, harrowed and disked new fields and harvested hay from the old. But probably the most exciting chore for the gray Ford came one day after all the relatives from Michigan had arrived to inspect Mother’s new husband.

I think at least a dozen visitors must have been there at one time as tents went up in the yard and horses shared space in the barn with the overflow crowd who curled up in their sleeping bags within the haymow.

Back in those days, when folks made the trip west, they stayed for a long time, almost a month. So during their visit, my folks planned a few highlights to supplement their watching Harold milk ol’ Bossy morning and night or waiting for their turn to take a spin on Mother’s mare Largo or our gelding Darkie around the front pasture.

The Midwest relatives came in late July, the height of the huckleberry season, and as far as we knew at the time, nobody had ever heard of huckleberries outside of North Idaho.

So one day, Mother decided we needed to go on an excursion up into the hills northwest of our place.

The perfect way to get everyone together was to hitch up the long flatbed hay wagon to Harold’s tractor. That way, kids, dogs, adults and buckets could all ride in the open air and take in the scenic sights while Harold putzed his way through the sparsely populated neighborhood and up the steep, winding road toward Schweitzer Mountain.

At the time, he was one of few people who ever used that road because it led to the city water reservoir where Sand Creek tumbled through on its way to Lake Pend Oreille.

For 33 years, Harold worked for the City of Sandpoint as its water filter operator. The city filter plant, a white brick building with its huge green tanks inside, had served as his second home several times each year while monitoring the turbidity in the city drinking water during run-off or heavy rainstorms.

He also frequently traveled to the dam and reservoir a couple of miles up the road to make sure everything was operating correctly. Sometimes that duty even involved chasing away teenage fishermen hoping to hook a big one or even young couples seeking romantic solitude.

Harold knew the area around the dam very well and, in fact, often chose the vast timberland up above as his annual deer hunting territory. So the day we were headed up the hillside for huckleberries, he was tickled to be serving as proud host to his almost private stomping grounds.

Before leaving our driveway on Boyer Road, a head count took place. Three kids, Mother, her sister June, cousin Dorothy and several of her kids, Aunt Louise and the two dogs, Laddie and Peggy, lined up with buckets, lunch bags and lots of enthusiasm for the big adventure ahead.

We did encounter one small problem--my Aunt Louise.

First, she worried about Harold’s tractor. She could not believe that his little Ford could pull that wagon and all those people up that road.

But Harold assured her that if he could haul a couple of tons of hay with the combo, it could certainly handle a dozen people. Not exactly convinced, Louise shrugged her shoulders and followed the crowd who were finding their spots on the wagon.

A rather plump but short farm girl from the rural area near Kalamazoo, she was eager to do her fair share of berry picking. But try as she might, there was no way she could manage to climb aboard the three-foot high wagon.

Somehow gravity took over when she attempted to lift her feet to the edge or even when she lay down on her chest and tried to roll over onto the wagon, and somehow attempts by others to pull her upward as she struggled went in vain.

Considering the fact that she would have to get off the wagon up on the mountain, and remount for the return trip, Harold finally solved the problem by heading off to the machine shed and returning with his step ladder.

Louise, much relieved, rode contentedly as the tractor and wagon slowly wound its way to our own private huckleberry heaven.

As a Midwesterner who referred to knolls as mountains, Mother’s sister June was afraid of Idaho wilderness heights but the thought of huckleberries temporarily tempered that fear.

Upon arrival at a perfect patch alongside the road, Harold remained on his tractor rolling cigarettes, chuckling about Louise and enjoying the scenery while the rest of the group spent about three hours wandering among the bushes picking and chattering away.

As minutes turned into hours and the monotony of picking, walking, picking, walking began to test our patience, Mother, the huckleberry cheerleader, broke the silence and intervened with her own brand of twenty questions.

Her purpose was twofold. Distract the bored masses and check to see that a big mean bear hadn’t hauled off any of the troops.

Big mean bears and huckleberries go hand in hand, or should we say hand in chompers. Therefore, the subsequent dialogue typified conversation that can be heard on just about any other huckleberry excursion with any other group of pickers.

“Mike?” Mother would yell.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“June?” she continued.

“Yes, Ginny,” June answered.

“How ya doin?” Mother inquired.

“Oh just great. These berries are good,” June replied. “Don’t know how many I’ll get in the bucket.”

“Kevin?” she continued.

Silence.

“Oh, Kevin?” she yelled again.

Again silence.

“Kevin, where are you?” she demanded.

Still not a sound.

“Kevin, you answer me right now,” she instructed.

By this time, everybody broke their picking routine, stood up and started looking around for our missing brother.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” Kevin finally burst out from his silence. Life around my brother was always filled with surprises and never-ending tests to disorder Mother’s bliss. Huckleberrying was no different.

And, of course, once she accounted for all bodies which generally weren’t hovering more than three feet away from each other, Mother began the inventory.

“Marianne, have you covered your bottom yet?” she inquired. After looking around at the seat of my pants and seeing that it was still there, I wasn’t quite sure what she meant so I gave what seemed like a safe answer.

“Yeah,” I said.

“How many berries do you have, Mike?” she pressed on.

It was a while before the ever-analytical Mike responded.

“Twenty-two,” he finally reported.

“Well, get to picking,” she say with the added incentive. “Just think of how good these are going to taste on with biscuits and whipped cream tonight.”

Mother’s method of encouraging us by appealing to our ever-present gluttonous appetites did the trick for the next few minutes.

We picked faster, ate fewer and dreamed of her delicious huckleberry shortcake which always featured sweetened berries, huge homemade biscuits and giant globs of fresh and thick Guernsey whipped cream. They were typical of all desserts at serving at our house in those days and they surely would give the most open-minded heart doctor nightmares.

My first experience turned out okay. When we dumped our Hills Bros. coffee cans with various levels of berries into the waiting milk buckets, several gallons of purple beauties along with a healthy supply of wood and leaves brought a smiles to everyone’s faces and visions of great desserts ahead.

Louise successfully climbed the ladder, and the tractor and wagon delivered us safely back to the North Boyer farm, where all but that night’s quota of dessert berries were cleaned, washed and frozen.

I did not go huckleberrying again for another four or five years. The next time we joined some family friends and rode in several pickups to a farway place somewhere up on Baldy Mountain. Baldy, so named for its lack of forests, overlooks Sandpoint and Lake Pend Oreille to the west.

In fact, the mountain is among the first scenic sights welcoming newcomers as they behold Sandpoint’s beauty on their first trip across the two-mile bridge leading into our community. Besides its spectacular beauty, the mountain serves as a guidepost for gardeners. Locals claim it’s not wise to plant the seeds until all the last patch of snow has left Baldy in the late spring.

The mountain at one time was considered a prime spot for a ski area, and word around town was that actress Lucille Ball was forking over the funds. An attempt at a lodge when the structure collapsed under ground a winter’s snow. A few years later, some developers targeted our Schweitzer Mountain for a ski development, causing plans for Baldy to be abandoned. No one seemed to mind.

Baldy may never have made it to skiing fame, but its easy accessibility made it a favorite for hunting, horseback riding and huckleberrying. So when we headed up the mountain in search of a berry patch, we saw lots of other pickups loaded down with buckets, kids and barking dogs, each looking for their private berry picking spot.

To this day, I’m not really sure where we went, but I do know that we saw no one once we parked for the afternoon. Before heading out to pick, everyone was reminded to stay within earshot just in case of bears. At the time, I needed no encouragement for the shear thought of a bear back in those days sent electrical jolts through my body.

From the time I was a small child, the creatures had kept me in constant fear. Besides brothers continually adding to my repertoire of vivid accounts ferocious, hungry bears devouring humans---especially girls named Marianne---my mind had conjured up its own share of nightmarish situations.

In fact, many a time I endured sleepless nights, knowing that a bear was hanging out right under my bedroom window, waiting for its midnight snack. I had even awakened my parents and summoned them to the room to show them the black mass which never seemed to move.

“Oh, Marianne, that’s your imagination,” Mother would say. “Let’s get back to sleep.” The following morning with the light of day I’d head outside and examine the spot where I knew the bear was lurking----to build my case and prove once and for all that the monster truly had stayed there for the night.

One day I found sure evidence. The grass near the lilac bush was matted down in a spot large enough for a mature black bear. Nothing else could have done this, I reasoned. Somehow my case fizzled upon introducing exhibit B to my mother.

“Oh, it was probably a deer,” she said. I could not convince her that something needed to be done about that resident bear. So years passed, and the front-yard bear kept me a crazy hostage away from that window and hiding beneath my blankets every night of my youth.

Those experiences had fed an already fertile imagination, which to this day needs little stimulation to turn me into a crazy woman, ever ready to jump and flee at the slightest, most far-fetched hint of danger.

So on huckleberry excursions, I needed no encouragement to have one ear cocked for the exact location of other humans between me and the road and the other tuned in for strange sounds within forest danger zones on the other side of me.

On this particular trip, we had brought along Mrs. Wyman, the mother of one my mother’s horseback-riding friends. She was an enterprising and independent widow who raised a beautiful garden, milked cows and kept horses at her little barn in the west part of town.

In those days, Mrs. Wyman was also the only person I’d ever met with an accent, and in my naive child’s mind, I thought surely there must be something wrong with her.

Adding to my suspicions was the fact that Mrs. Wyman was also deaf. She could hear people standing directly in front of her, but behind her back, anything was fair game.

While most of us set off with one-pound coffee cans, Mrs. Wyman had bigger aspirations. She wasted no time heading for the woods with two 3-gallon milk buckets.

Throughout the afternoon, the customary berry counts to raise troop morale occasionally broke the sound of tall, skinny trees swaying in the breeze and individual squadrons of pesky flies persistently buzzing our sweaty brows.

A few hours later we all gathered at the pickups to deposit our booty into the central containers. Half a gallon here and nearly a gallon there added up to an ample winter supply for the Tibbs and Schmidt family. But the decision was still out for the Wymans.

Marian came back, but her mother didn’t. After waiting a few minutes, confident that Mrs. Wyman would return soon, the adults started expressing concern.

It was getting late into the afternoon. Surely she’d appear from the woods. Another fifteen minutes passed. Still no Mrs. Wyman. That’s when people went into action, spreading out and calling in different directions.

“MRS. WYMAN . . . MRS. WYMAN,” individual calls settled way off into the forest. No answer. Repeating their calls several times, the group finally faced what a reality they already knew.

Mrs. Wyman couldn’t hear someone five feet away let along hundreds of yards away in the thick brush. With the big group, nobody had really kept track of what direction Mrs. Wyman, an independent sort, had taken.

At the risk of having anyone else get lost, Plan A called for everyone to simply wait around the pickups for a while and hope that Mrs. Wyman found her way back.

While tired kids moiled about making insults at each other, adults visited and wondered nervously where on Baldy Mountain Mrs. Wyman could be. I’m sure some alternate plans were quietly unfolding as everyone tried to appear calm about our lost friend. After more than half an hour had passed, talk turned to what to do next.

Suddenly, off to the north the figure of a lone woman appeared, walking out of the dense brush. Obviously weighted down as she spotted us and walked our way, we could see a big smile on Mrs. Wyman’s face.

As she neared the pickups, all conversation stopped and adults began to breathe easy with the sight of a rather unconcerned Mrs. Wyman happily bringing back her berry booty.

Never in my short life before nor in the many decades since, have I seen that many huckleberries picked by one person or even through a whole group effort.

Mrs. Wyman had gone into the woods, found her huckleberry heaven and performed a superhuman picking feat. Two three-gallon milk buckets overflowed with royal purple berries the size of medium cherries.

From that day forth, I set my own huckleberry goal---to find a patch like the one Mrs. Wyman discovered deep within the woods.

It’s been a lifelong challenge which I seriously pursue every time I head for the mountains with buckets and bug spray. Over the years of never quite measuring up though, I’ve become convinced that Mrs. Wyman really had a supernatural experience that day.

As she entered the woods, forces unknown to humans swept her up and took her for a brief trip to another planet where huckleberries abound as obnoxious weeds throughout the fields and the roadsides like tansey or daisies can do on Earth.

Mrs. Wyman was sworn to secrecy as her alien kidnappers allowed her to grab handful after handful of purple fruit from overloaded bushes. The effort was all part of their plan to rid their planet of the purple nuisances.

When Mrs. Wyman had filled her buckets and cleared the pesky berries from a couple of city blocks, her captors brought her back and deposited her in the woods on Baldy.

That’s the only explanation I can fathom for this woman finding and picking that many berries because, try as I might, searching for a better patch, finding what looks to be a Mrs. Wyman special and picking like a mad woman, I’ve never come close to gathering more than a gallon of berries in three hours’ time.

Through my efforts to find purple gold, though, have come some funny and even scary experiences. . . .