SOMETIMES the boys climb Osprey Mountain, not far from the school. We can see them from the dorm and hear them whooping like Indians in the movies. The Indians in the movies are not like anyone I know. Real Indians are just people like anyone else except they love the mountains.
At the end of summer at home we pack up our tent, lots of food, warm winter clothes, all our picking baskets, cooking gear and warm quilts. Then we head up into the mountains to Tekameen Summit. The whole family climbs into the pickup truck and away we go.
When we get up there we pitch the tent, and Mum cooks supper over the campfire. Then we sit around the campfire in the dark and tell stories. My dad tells the best ones, about bears, his war stories and funny things that happen to people. One of his favourites is about the bar in England that wouldn’t let you in unless you were a Scot and had Mac in front of your name. One guy tried to get in by saying his name was Macaroni. My dad laughed and laughed and thumped his leg when he told that story.
We camp up there until we fill all our baskets with shiny almost black huckleberries, the best berries of all. They taste sweet and tart. Mum calls them medicine food. We serve huckleberries when we have important visitors.
Yay-yah usually comes berry-picking with us or with Uncle Tommy and his family or Uncle Willy and his family. We all camp in the same spot so we can visit each other’s campfires or share food if the hunters get a deer. They call it a moweech.
Usually other Indian families come berry-picking too, and camp nearby. They tell us all the news of their families and some funny stories. They discuss serious business sometimes too, but they talk in Indian so I don’t understand what they are talking about. But you can tell it’s important by their voices, the serious looks and the quietness of the people listening.
There is something really special about being mountain people. It’s a feeling like you know who you are, and you know each other. You belong to the mountains.
The old people like Yay-yah smile at you and tell you something about the trail you’re following or show you how to cover your berries with leaves so they stay fresh. They know where to find the biggest berries and how to cook delicious food over the campfire. They notice how many berries you pick, who sneaks off to go fishing, and what everybody likes to eat. They tease you around the campfire if you don’t pick many berries. Next day you pick lots.
Two or three ladies will pick in one spot together and talk and laugh all day. One time Mum and I were picking some nice big berries on the side of a steep hill. Just as we were heading down to camp I tripped on a tree root and went rolling and tumbling all the way down the hill, still holding on to my basket. I landed on my shoulder with my legs high up in the air. My mum caught up to me, then started to laugh. “You saved ALL your berries,” she said. She told everybody about it at the campfire. She said, “Tootie rolled all the way down a BIG hill, and she didn’t spill ANY BERRIES.” Yay-yah turned and looked at me with a little smile, and Dad chuckled. “Good for you, McSpoot,” he said.
When it rains Yay-yah makes a tiny little fire and practically sits on it to keep warm. Everybody else makes big fires. Once, too many people crowded around Yay-yah’s fire so Uncle Tommy had to make her another one.
The men go out with baskets and guns on horseback or on foot. They circle all around the camp and the picking spots to check for bears before they go. Sometimes they come back with lots of berries. Other times they just look the mountain valley over, or do a bit of hunting. They’re very quiet in the woods. We look up sometimes when we’re picking berries and there they are looking at us, and we never heard them come.
When they hunt, they get up before dawn to bathe in a deep pool in the mountain stream. When they come back from the mountains my dad and uncles talk to each other in Indian and tell each other what they saw. There isn’t a thing about those mountains they don’t know.