Cassandra and I were hiking on a lush trail in Glacier National Park when it happened. Now, ‘hiking’ is also known as a walk in the woods , just with sticks added. This is our second year in a row of ‘hiking’ in GNP, so we’re definitely seasoned woodspersons at this point and our days of making stupid rookie mistakes are way behind us. For example, last year on our first trip up here to the crown of the continent, we stumbled upon this pipe that runs glacial water right out of a cliff face on the side of the road which is of some local notoriety apparently, and we saw some people filling up water jugs as we pulled up. Now, I don’t wanna sound like Donny Don’t, but drinking water coming out of a rock in the middle of a pandemic seems like not the best of ideas-which is pretty much what I was hollering to Cassandra as she trotted up to the rock faucet and took a huge gulp. She pshawed away my clucks of disapproval and was right as usual, since she’s sitting right here next to me now, not even so much as blinded by the cliff water. Now, I’m obviously glad she’s not blind but I am also kinda bummed to have missed out on the cliff water.
Today, we found what we thought were Huckleberries growing on the side of the trail. In case you didn’t know, yes Huckleberries are a real thing and taste amazing and grow seemingly everywhere up here in northern Montana, unlike Boysenberries which were created in a lab to boost flagging attendance at the lame-ass Knotts Berry Farm amusement park. “Huckleberries!” we exclaimed like delighted idiots.
And, perhaps in a subliminal attempt to make up for the cliff water mistake, I popped a couple of the purplest ones right into my mouth before we even inspected them. Cassandra was taking pictures of the ‘huckleberry’ bush and asked how they tasted. Now, by now I’ve had huckleberry candy, huckleberry iced tea, huckleberry pie, huckleberry cheesecake, huckleberry lemonade, and huckleberry barbecue sauce. But, the thing is, this didn’t taste like ANY of those. It tasted more like battery acid and melon rind. I spit out most of it but had swallowed some already.
Holy shit!
Did I just eat poison berries???
I mean, I know I am a hypochondriac but that tasted nasty. And did my tongue feel numb? Or was that just the lingering terrible acid taste? I thought of Winston Groom choking down his Victory gin. Cassandra delicately chewed one and immediately spit it out, too. Not reassuring.
Just then, a large group of teenagers jogged up. “Huckleberries!!” they shrieked.
“These are huckleberries, right?” an earnest young man asked me, plucking a few.
“I don’t know…” I said meekly.
Good enough for him apparently, because he popped em right in his mouth.
Immediately he spit them out, retching “those aren’t huckleberries!!” as he gasped and spit his way on down the trail.
Fuck, man; I thought to myself, that was a really REALLY stupid thing to do, eating that mystery murder berry. And usually my keenly-tuned senses of paranoia and hypochondria keep me outta fixes like this.
Shitshitshit.
I looked up at the alpine peaks all around, then down at my useless cell phone. The nearest hospital was hundreds of miles away, the nearest berry poisoning experts might as well have been on the moon.
Shit.
Cassandra laughed at me, reminding me that she also ate the murder berries (AND drank the cliff water, in her defense) and was completely fine. I grumbled that she was probably right, all the while silently knowing that her hearty Finnish/Sconsin DNA would power her through most obstacles that my candy-ass Sicilian/Suburban DNA would find fatal. I was doomed.
We pulled into our new favorite restaurant, Johnson’s of St Mary, a family-owned cafe nestled so quaintly in the mountainside that you expect Bob Newhart to come wandering out of the kitchen. If you ever find yourself up these ways, hit em up-tell them the berry-poisoning guy sent you.
We went in and got a table, the waitress and cook/owner guy both remembering us and giving us a sweet table in the back. We compliment the owner/cook on his bear skin he has and he told us how that bear had been rummaging through the trash and scaring people and generally being too beary for a restaurant and how he had killed that bear himself. We asked how something like this goes down. He told us how he had to go to the Tribal game commission (he’s a Native and we were on Blackfeet land) and get permission from them. How long did it take after that?
“Same day.” he said, grinning
“Tracking is my superpower.” Anyone who saw this bear, or the next, scarier, blacker one he killed for similar reasons a month ago would readily agree with that statement. As we shared our Thimbleberry cheesecake, he told us he had picked the berries himself.
Now, up to this point I had been able to allay my fear of impending berry-related anaphylaxis with unbelievably tasty food, but I whipped out my phone and showed him a picture I had taken of the murder berry bush and asked him what they were.
Now this can go one of two ways, as I saw it. Option 1, those are just huckleberries but maybe you gotta wash em or boil em or some shit to make em taste so delectable, or option two-those are definitely Murder Berries and it’s all over now baby blue.
Luckily for me, and by extension, you: option 1.
Now there’s a moral kicking around in there somewhere and I hope I figure it out before I need Cassandra to save me from the next batch of murder berries or murder water or whatever other weapons Mother Nature has in her endless arsenal to use in the war she is waging against me.
Good Luck and God Speed.
