A Flowery Trail . . . . and a Blast

"Do you want to go up Deer Creek?" Bill asked when I came in the house from mowing the first big patch of lawn.  He had just come home from church and seemed pretty eager to go. "I want to fish for half an hour." 

When Bill puts a time limit on how long he's gonna fish, that needs to be marked on the calendar.  Normally when Bill takes off fishing during an afternoon, I don't expect to see him until the next day.

He promised, "Half hour, that's all." 

I bit the bait, said yes and told him I'd hold him to a half hour, that was all. 

So, off we went, headed for Bonners Ferry with a stop-off at Super 1 for coffee, chocolate and chicken.  Bill ate the chicken while I sipped on the coffee and munched on M & M peanuts. 

We headed up the Meadow Creek Road and then turned off at the Deer Creek/Placer Creek Road.  After climbing up the mountain, we stopped at a turn-off where Bill grabbed his fishing gear and I had my camera. 

"Half an hour!" I reminded him.

He gave me the keys to the truck and said, "If I'm not back in half an hour, take off . . . that'll teach me."  

"Yeah, sure," I said, figuring, of course, that I would drive off and leave him. 

By golly, Bill got back to the truck before I did.  I was giving him some slack by continuing to hike up and down the road, looking for photos. 

So, we loaded up and headed back down the mountain.  He then asked if I wanted to hike some more, as he had a spot in mind. When we came to the Keno Creek Road and told me that road led to the Buckhorn Mine of the early 1900s, I said, "Let's go up this road."

The road goes through an area reserved by the Kootenai Tribe for their annual huckleberry picking.  All the camping areas are well marked with the "Reserved" signs and with a set of rules.  

As Bill pointed out, the Federal government manages the land, but the area is the traditional cultural setting for the Tribe's huckleberry encampments.  All others who want to camp in the area can do so for up to 14 days, but for the Tribe, stays are unlimited. 

In a 2010 paper for her field biology class, Kara Strass wrote about the importance of huckleberries as nutritional and medicinal benefits for Salish and Kootenai tribes.  She points out that the huckleberry encampments were meant to be both work and fun for Tribal members. 

From Kara Strass's paper . . . . 

People would move to the huckleberry patches for as long as they could, from a weekend all the way to several weeks during huckleberry season.

The picking of huckleberries is not just a custom that functions to get enough food for the year, it was a social time when families, bands, and even separate tribes would come together and have a good time.

During the picking, there would often be talking or story telling among

those in the patch. At night, there would be games and gambling.

Several of the respondents described being in the berry patch as children and how much fun it was to be with all the other children.

There was work to be done, yet there was plenty of time to

have fun. Before there was a set currency, the huckleberries would be used in gambling.

Because people went back to the same places each year, it was common to meet the same people every year. One traditional place to pick is in Buckhorn, Idaho, and many tribes would meet each year.

The day was time to work and pick berries, but the night was time for fun, storytelling, and gambling. One respondent even remembered marriages taking place in the huckleberry patch.

Our trip up Keno Creek not only gave us a sense of Kootenai culture, but it also provided a new road untravelled followed by a new trail.  

We walked about two miles after parking the pickup, and the route was glorious with all the wildflowers gushing vibrant colors along the trail---even Indian paintbrush which we're not accustomed to seeing until summer. 

Had we gotten an earlier start, I'm sure we would have hiked further, but yesterday's experience gave us the incentive to return and check out the whole route, maybe even up to the Buckhorn Mine. 

It was lovely, to say the least. 

Finally, today, I have found an online photo of the January, 1981 National Geographic cover photo shot on this day 35 years ago by my cousin Madalyn's husband the late Doug Miller of Ephrata, Wash.

Doug, a career photographer, stepped outside his house in Ephrata as the ash cloud from a couple of hundred miles away billowed through the area.  He submitted the photo to National Geographic and they put it on the cover! 

We all have our memories of that day, but Doug earned a bit of immortality by capturing the drama which so many of us in the Northwest experienced when looking toward the skies after the blast. 

Happy Monday.