Fields Of Huckleberry, Pockets Of Hate

It was huckleberries, not the Senate hearings, that the old boys perched along the bar at the Northwoods Tavern wanted to talk about.

Ruby Ridge is “just up that road right there, no more than four miles.” Yes, they know Randy Weaver and his whole family. And yes, they know about the Senate hearings examining the tragic shooting deaths at Weaver’s Ruby Ridge home. But time is running out to pick wild mountain huckleberries.

Huckleberries, I’m told, are not like blueberries and other berries that can be controlled by man and forced to grow in gardens or in neat rows. Huckleberries are wild. They can’t be tamed. It’s a quality to be admired in this remote neck of northern Idaho, even by men who don’t particularly like huckleberries.

“I don’t eat no more than this much all year,” said the biggest man, cupping his huge right hand.

“I like ‘em in pancakes sometimes,” said the bartender, fixing a special coffee for the one man not drinking beer.

“I like huckleberry pie maybe twice a year,” said another man.

There’s not much to see up on Ruby Ridge that helps explain what happened during the 11-day standoff with federal agents in 1992. Weaver’s large cabin is located on 20 fir-covered acres that include a spring and scenic mountain vistas. This is where Weaver, a white separatist and fundamentalist Christian, moved his family to get away from it all.

Weaver’s Ruby Ridge property now is owned by a 29-year-old friend of Kevin Harris, who along with Weaver was charged with murder and conspiracy in the death of a federal marshal. Both men were acquitted by a U.S. District Court jury in Boise.

The Ruby Ridge property is valued by the county assessor at $21,500, which explains some of the appeal the area has for hippies, corporate executives and people on the political fringes. The land is inexpensive, remote and beautiful. A place to escape. To be left alone.

“It’s the damn liberal Eastern press that has tried to make us all look like a bunch of Fruit Loops,” said an angry native of Coeur d’Alene. I know how he feels.

Waco natives felt the same way when the world’s press flooded into town during the 51-day standoff with federal agents at David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound in 1993. News stories at the time tried to paint Waco residents as Bible-thumping gun-toters whose fashion ideas came from the local Kmart.

But you find what you’re looking for. It’s hard to avoid. For instance, just down the road from Weaver’s mountain-top cabin on Ruby Ridge is Coeur d’Alene, a 25,000-population community of Alpine beauty and cleanliness. Nestled on its outskirts is the Church of Jesus Christ Christian Aryan Nation, an amalgam of all that is worst in America.

Weaver visited an Aryan Nation meeting, which many locals believe caused all his problems. That’s where he met a federal law enforcement informant who eventually talked him into manufacturing and selling two sawed-off shotguns.

South of Coeur d’Alene near the Gospel Hump Wilderness Area is where Weaver’s former Green Beret commander, Col. Bo Gritz, is subdividing property into a community of anti-government survivalists. In 1988 Gritz was on the presidential ticket with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

The timber and tourist community of Sandpoint is a fairly short drive north of the Aryan Nation headquarters. Beautiful, for sure. But Sandpoint now is home for former Los Angeles detective Mark Furhman, infamous for his part in the O.J. Simpson trial.

How can you tell when it’s spring in Sandpoint? goes the current inside joke. Answer: When you see Mark Furhman outside planting gloves.

They weren’t telling this joke at the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce, where I stopped in to ask how the community was reacting to its national press coverage as a retirement refuge for Furhman and others who share his beliefs. A chamber representative said I would have to make an appointment to talk to the executive director, who didn’t show up.

Naples and Ruby Ridge are a few more minutes up the road from Sandpoint. This is serious timber country. NAFTA is vigorously opposed. This week in Coeur d’Alene an environmentalist was convicted of three misdemeanor charges for his antics protesting timber sales.

But in the Northwoods Tavern the boys were talking huckleberries. The bearded man at the end with the bulldog at his feet told of a complicated way to clean huckleberries that involved staking down two bedsheets. Another man said a wool blanket works better.

The big man said he heard the easiest way was to put them in the back of a pickup and drive for awhile at least 70 miles per hour. This, he was told, would strip the leaves from the huckleberries. So he tried it. When he stopped, all the leaves were gone. But so were the huckleberries.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” the man sitting next to me said as I got up to leave. “I knew Randy Weaver real good. And he wasn’t no Nazi like people have been saying. He was just like everyone else.”

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