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July 25, 2005On the trail of the wild berryByRecord-Eagle outdoor columnist I like my summers hot and my winters cold, which seems to fit pretty well with living in Michigan. And this year is turning out to be a fine, hot summer of the kind I remember from my youth, although it's very dry and I'm starting to get a bit concerned about the huckleberry crop. A bit of translation for non-jackpine savages: in the piney woods of northern Michigan, a blueberry is huckleberry. Same thing. Growing up, we never used the term "blueberry," which seemed vaguely citified and pretentious. By midsummer the vast sand plains of jackpine and scrub oak in the Huron National Forest became simply the "huckleberry woods," as in "We're headed for the huckleberry woods tomorrow." Like many wild things, huckleberries are smaller and more flavorful than their domestic counterparts. During a good summer with adequate rain, they grow in incredible profusion in the piney woods of northern Michigan, especially in burned-over areas. In the not-too-distant past, wild huckleberries were a commercial commodity in the area, with entire families taking to the woods during the summer and selling their berries to itinerant buyers who would come through with horse and wagon. My own grandfather, who suffered from asthma, would live in a tent in the woods each summer to escape the humidity and pollen of the lowlands and pick huckleberries. According to my father, some people in those days depended on huckleberries for their annual income. "That's all they did, was pick berries," he said. Of course, that was in the days before car insurance and cable bills. As kids, our long, idyllic summers were interrupted by two terms of unavoidable indentured servitude: haying season and huckleberry season, both of which coincided with the hottest weather of the year. My dad liked to take off the first cutting of hay around the Fourth of July, when temperatures began pushing 90. It was good drying weather, he figured, and although I don't suppose anyone thought much about it in those days, haying that late gave the pheasants time to hatch and raise their broods to a size where they could escape the mower. We put up square bales bound with wire (if you've ever wondered about the origin of the term "haywire") and, being frugal, Dad set the baler to pack them as tight as possible. I don't suppose many kids nowadays have had the experience of stacking 75-pound hay bales in a dust-filled, sweltering haymow, but it was character-building. Huckleberrying wasn't as physically demanding as haying, but it was more tedious. Berrying was supervised by the women of the family - my mom, aunts and especially my maternal grandmother, who was a no-nonsense huckleberry-picking machine. The adults would fill big roasting pans with berries, while us kids were issued little "lard pails" to fill and empty into the common kitty. Wild huckleberries aren't that big, and filling those little pails seemed to take forever. And if you succumbed to temptation and ate one, it was all over. You couldn't stop eating them until your pail was empty, much to the disapproval of the adults. The good thing about huckleberrying was that it was in the woods and there was plenty of shade, although it still got pretty hot. Squirrels and bluejays were plentiful, and occasionally we'd see a porcupine ambling along, or the brilliant little green snakes that inhabit the piney woods. Snakes of any kind were an endangered species around my mom or grandma, even those harmless green snakes. Sometimes we'd encounter hognose snakes, which, although harmless, put up an impressive bluff and were thought by the elder generation to be venomous "puff adders." Their life expectancy was short. There were some hazards in the woods - mosquitoes, if it had been a wet year; huge colonies of aggressive red ants; and most feared of all, ground-nesting yellowjackets. We never saw any sign of a bear, which in those days stayed mostly to the north of the AuSable River. Many years later I walked along a salmon stream on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska during berry season, stepping carefully to avoid what looked like big piles of blueberry jam every few yards along the trail. Some were still steaming, which made me glad I had a .30-06 slung over my shoulder. If they don't all dry up, I hope to get out and pick huckleberries this summer. I won't be hauling hay, although I hear my Uncle Herman, who is 93, has been haying. As I understand it, though, he's just driving the tractor, not bucking bales. Record-Eagle staffer Bruce Bischoff is a contributing writer to the outdoor page. To read his recent columns visit our Sports page. Bischoff can be contacted at bbischoff@record-eagle.com
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