Huckleberry Country

A Moose Missive: Are They Real?

By Gabriel Cruden / January 30, 2026 /

I was promised a moose. In fact, I was promised a moose once before, so this is nothing new. Are moose promises legal and binding, or are they merely lures…

Hit the Trail with Soph

By Gabriel Cruden / January 30, 2026 /

I stopped making New Year’s resolutions a long time ago when I finally admitted to myself that I like the creating of them more than I enjoy the execution. However,…

CREATE – A Living Community Space for the Arts in Newport

By Gabriel Cruden / January 30, 2026 /

There are places in small towns that don’t announce themselves loudly. They don’t feel like institutions. They feel more like secrets passed hand to hand. The kind of place someone…

Hit the Trail with Soph

By Gabriel Cruden / December 5, 2025 /

It’s been memed to death, but the words of Ned Stark (Game of Thrones) ring true every year in the Inland Northwest: “Winter is coming.” You’d think having lived in…

Let It Snow!

By Gabriel Cruden / December 5, 2025 /

Every year, about mid-November, when you start to see naked trees and feel that certain something in the air, do you say to yourself, “Man, I can’t wait for it…

Enjoying the Outdoors

By Gabriel Cruden / October 31, 2025 /

If you’ve spent time in this area for any amount of time, you may know fall and winter is a popular time for the hunters to emerge. Maybe you’ve been…

They Paved Paradise and Put up a Dentist’s Office

By Gabriel Cruden / October 31, 2025 /

There’s a meme going around Facebook that says: “You know you’re old when you drive around and say, ‘I remember when all this was forest.’” As if I needed yet…

Smoke on the Water: The Steamboats of the Pend Oreille

By Gabriel Cruden / October 31, 2025 /

By Robin Milligan If you stepped onto the Newport wharf on a warm July afternoon in 1908, the town would hum with expectation. Men in stiff jackets adjusted their hats,…

Neither a Romantic Fantasy or Scary Nightmare

By Gabriel Cruden / June 27, 2025 /

By Robin Milligan Emily Flynn-Delay is an artist of vivid and intriguing portraits living in Rosalia, Wash. While she mostly works in acrylic and oil-based paints, she actually began at…

Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine

By Gabriel Cruden / March 1, 2025 /

By Bob Johnson As a savvy kid, I always knew when the latest edition of Reader’s Digest had arrived in the mail because Dad would come sashaying into the kitchen…