Searching for huckleberry utopia

I have a habit of jumping blindly into misadventures in the wilderness with vague directions and equally vague goals.

Sometimes this unique, albeit borderline insane, habit lands me smack dab in the middle of some of the most beautiful county I could possibly imagine. Sometimes it just gets me lost.

Such was the case when I announced, with a familiar tone of resolve, to my girlfriend and fellow reporter Jamie Doran, “Get the dog, we’re going to go pick huckleberries.”

Driven by memories of picking blueberries in the mountains of Western North Carolina as a boy and the consuming desire to prepare, cook and summarily destroy and digest a home-made huckleberry pie, Jamie and I packed up our car with an optimistically large plastic container and some friends that wanted to come along for the ride.

Patrick Hooper, a Missoulaite, his girlfriend Libby Schnorr, who was visiting from Boulder Colorado and their dog, Max.

The first thing I learned about huckleberry picking is that if people in Montana do know where there are large droves of the huckleberry plants, they are not telling. Most of my attempts to get directions to the huckleberry utopia that I knew existed somewhere in the Wilderness of Mineral County were met with mild laughter and vague pointing.

So after sifting through dozens of different suggestions I settled on driving out of Superior on Cedar Creek Road, bound for Missoula Lake.

This was my first trip to Missoula Lake and the only directions I could manage to get where along the lines of, “Just keep heading up Cedar Creek Road, you’ll find it.”

So there we were, cruising through dirt roads with our heads poked out the windows asking foolish questions like, “What does a huckleberry plant look like?” and “Where do these things grow?”

Had I either the foresight or patience to do some research before I took off into the woods looking for what amounted to a round purple needle in a haystack, I would have found that huckleberries actually grow in very specific places.

I had no idea that huckleberries grow best in elevations between 3,500 and 7,200 feet and that they grow best in forests with roughly 50 percent tree cover.

According to Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks the berries need a good deal of sunlight to grow and grow best in grow in 20- to 50-year-old burns, old clear-cuts, ski runs, avalanche chutes, and older, open, high-elevation forests.

So instead of looking in specific areas where I might find droves of my berry treasure, we drove half-hazardly down Cedar Creek Road, with our heads out the window.

Every time someone saw what they thought might be a huckleberry, we pulled the car over and took off sliding down steep hills in search of berries.

Interestingly enough, for the first two hours or so all we could find were raspberries.

While Libby, being an enormous raspberry fan, was ecstatic, all I managed to become was frustrated.

I had no interest in a raspberry pie, and as delicious as they were, raspberries were not what I came for.

After a long wait of finding nothing but raspberries, we stumbled upon our first Huckleberry patch of real substance and along with it a stark reminder that we were not alone in the woods.

While in the back f my mind I had been thinking about bears and wildlife all day, nothing is as impressive as picking through huckleberries and finding black bear hair stuck in the branches of the huckleberry bushes you are picking from.

We did not actually see a bear that day, which is a blessing considering that the barking of our two young dogs could have made that a dangerous experience. However it is always important to keep a watchful eye out and remember that people are not the only ones picking huckleberries.

As we made our way up Cedar Creek Road and past an hour-long construction delay, we finally found ourselves at Missoula Lake, and the best huckleberries yet.

While the berry pickings were still slim at best, most likely already picked over by other huckleberry fanatics, we were able to pick a few berries.

I also learned that picking huckleberries takes a surprising amount of patience and skill that I lack. While Patrick, Libby and Jamie were content to scour the bushes for each and every berry they could find, I was far too easily distracted by the woods surrounding me to out pick my appetite.

By the end of the day I had hardly filled the plastic bag I brought with me and any hopes of my huckleberry pie were fading with the sun.

So, dejected and pie-less, I returned home from my day off with enough berries for, as Jamie jokingly put it, “maybe a muffin?”