- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The plastic cottage cheese containers conveyed optimism for a success we would never actually achieve when we set out on the path along Henry's Fork searching for huckleberries. Each summer, my sisters and I would follow my mother and my red-headed grandmother into the shadows above the trail, over fallen lodgepole pines and through drifting spider web tendrils, all in hopes of one huckleberry pancake breakfast.

They are shy, my youngest sister always said. The berries tucked under small green leaves and became almost invisible, but when a spot of sun touched their purple skins, they glowed. When we found a patch, we glowed, too - our cheeks pink in the afternoon heat, and our fingertips quickly turning purple from the picking.

We rarely got enough on our own even to cover the bottom of the container we each carried - we had to sample some along the way, of course, and often there was the despair of the dropped bucket, purple berries rolling away into pine needles and duff. But together, we usually got enough for one pancake breakfast.

Years later, I read Walden and discovered Henry David Thoreau picking huckleberries, too, as he contemplated what it means to live "deliberately" and "deep." "My greatest skill," he wrote, "has been to want but little." (Read Henry Hikes to Fitchburg for a wonderful children's book rendition!)

All these years later, I still try each year, even alone, to make a pilgrimage to the banks of Henry's Fork in the latter part of the summer, hoping to gather a few handfuls of huckleberries. I pause in familiar patches and peer under leaves and wander through drifting strands of memories of my sisters and mother and grandmother. Whether or not my fingertips turn purple, I swallow bits of sweetness.