subscribe

In which our heroes travel once again to the beautiful California coastline and hike into the mountains to partake of the huckleberry harvest, making fresh ice cream thereof with their travelling companions.

This is August 2000; Isaac's second trip to Point Reyes for this annual tradition. (We enjoyed the 1998 Huckleberry Hike when Rose was pregnant, so perhaps this is Isaac's third year. Hmmm.) Most years it pleasantly warm, and this year was no different.

The high point of the hike is the making of fresh ice cream in old-fashioned technology. Ice, salt, lots of elbow grease. The result? Tasty huckleberry ice cream. This is probably Isaac's first taste of sweets, at least the first time he's had more than a few spoons worth. At twenty months of age Isaac can now hold the cone by himself, and we were only too happy to let him indulge to his heart's content (which, as I recall, was two or three cones).

There's a great potlatch supper given while the ice cream is being made. We drag several blankets from the trunk of my car and spread them on the dry grass. There we and some friends of ours enjoy the feast. It's mostly vegetarian, although some die-hards cart along various meats to cook. Mattie, a neighborhood friend of Isaac's, appears Alfred E. Newman-style (according to her father, David).