Huckleberry Season

The huckleberries are on! These wild, sweet berries define living in the Rockies for many. I love eating huckleberries but I love picking them more. Moving slowly from bush to bush I experience the woods much more intimately than when I'm hiking. Life's chatter drops away and I feel renewed. The Japanese call this "forest bathing."

There are twelve species of huckleberries (Vaccinium spp.) in the Rocky Mountains. Members of the Heath Family, they grow from 3,500 feet up to about 7,000 feet elevation. Huckleberries like partially shaded slopes and are important colonizers of burned areas and so...