JUST BEARLY LIGHT ENOUGH

Track, sidetrack, big track

The ‘Stack’s Caravan Writers Collective tossed out a challenge that I simply could not resist —bears and stories and synonyms, oh my! I received some accolades and the retelling led me to want to share this tingly experience with all of you. So if you’re BOAT-STORIES-ONLY people, let this one go by, (although you’re missing out; it’ll take you barely seven minutes to absorb the bare bear tale…)

JUST BEARLY LIGHT ENOUGH

It was the night I lost my glasses. Not the kind you’re thinking; these were fancy sunglasses designed by someone in Hawaii who I hadn’t ever heard of but who’d gotten trendy, somehow, and I spent extra to have his signature, inexplicably, on the side of my head (was it Jim?...it must have felt important, then, to pay extra, on a shoestring). Regardless, they were tinted and prescription so you can imagine that the whole package cost me more than I had made in the last month, because that time of year I was lucky enough to not work, earn nothing, and just wander the forests, calling for elk, tracking them to the water holes. Being in the woods, let’s face it, rocks. “IF YOU’RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE IN THE WOODS, YOU’RE LUCKY ENOUGH.” My father owned this message on a couch pillow; you know the type, fake embroidered, stamped really, animal tracks all over it, probably foreign-made but seeming very Americana. His stuffed sentiment is gone but not forgotten; that's a bare-my-soul story for another time.

It’s not actually luck that takes us into nature. It’s something far better, far more fulfilling.

Author’s image of the San Juan Mountain Range, Colorado, USA.

I don’t know when those glasses slipped, unnoticed, off my head. I do know EXACTLY when I touched souls with what I would bet my meager savings was a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis). There are no grizzly bear in the stunning, remote mountains of Western Colorado, according to the state department. Or are there?

From my bedroom window in the peak of Many Glacier Hotel I watched grizzlies every day. I know what they look like; I should be able to identify them. At lunch the tourists would desert their tables, food untouched, bills unpaid, just to see what we employees had become too quickly accustomed to. It’s been thirty-five years since I managed that restaurant at barely twenty-one.

The sightings became routine, dangerously so, I’m sure. There are even more of that threatened species there now; most people truly fear them but I’m honestly just jealous and disappointed in myself that I took all those opportunities for granted. In the lower 48, Glacier National Park has the largest grizzly concentration, regardless of what Yellowstone might tout. I worked a summer there, too; #1 complaint of visitors in Yellowstone; they didn’t see a bear. In Glacier we sold bells for the tourists to wear, ensuring that they encountered less of those fabled creatures, ensuring that the animals would hear them coming for the bear’s sake. They’re the ones who generally die when there’s human contact.

Whoa, that was a huge sidetrack, sorry….back to Western Colorado twenty years after my summers in Parks, with Maui Jim sunglasses perched on my head, calling for elk. I worked as a guide, of sorts, for years, out there. I haven’t ever, will never, can never, shoot another living creature, but I guided folks who hunted. They hunted like my dad hunted, just so he could be in the woods. If they came home with organic, lean, delicious meat, so much the better. Some hunting has become controversial. However, it is necessary because man eliminated the predators (soapbox). Regardless of your political leaning, please remember that. There are simply too many deer and elk for many areas to sustain. Something must control the populations; it’s Mother Nature’s way, and we’ve disrupted that tremendously.

@ Wheeler Elk Camp, part of another life & time. Credit SRU.

Track, sidetrack, retrack, big track, in the black mud at my feet, each impressive claw clearly seen. It was dusk, the witching hour for animals hungry and thirsty at the end of their secluded days. I squatted in cattails at the edge of a previously undiscovered marshy pond. My evening quest had been quiet, just forest-dwelling birds, a few squirrels, a porcupine or two climbing down from perches in pines, until the track. And then it struck me that it was too quiet, no birds even, and so I knew, and settled onto the dry end of a partially submerged log to await whatever big thing was headed my way. People don’t silence the little creatures, we inspire them to warn each other. It is the big creatures that silence them, and the silence was complete.

Directly in front of me on the right, a massive bear head appeared, perhaps forty feet away. Not far enough, really, if she decided to show aggression. Not close enough, either, in the fast-fading light, to get a good photo, but I have the image permanently etched in my mind.

I knew she knew I was there, her poor eyesight hadn’t told her but the prominent shiny nose most certainly did. A shaggy head with cartoon-like almost-velvet ears turned independently in my direction and gazed, unfocused, questing for something out of place. I froze, heart thumping, armpits wet, hands icy cold. She dropped her head to drink, and then slorfed around in the shallow, dark water searching for sustenance that was easy or interesting or elusive, to pad her winter insulation. I will never know if she was actually a she, but that’s what came to me with her rational, reasonable, correct assessment that I would do her no harm. We felt each other. I swear.

Her back and shoulders showed a perfect silhouette, the dark brown fur fading to blonde spikes on top of her massive hump, oversize skin shimmered in waves, independent of the muscle beneath, as she pawed and splashed, then pulled her head up quickly, spraying the world with muddy mist and the acrid, earthy, slightly repugnant aroma that carrion scavengers emanate.

There was no wind, barely even a breeze, the only sounds came from the hump-backed bear and a horsefly that had found fair game. I was furless and a far better target than the one across the pond. The insect was difficult to ignore; they can take a chunk. Unthinking, I swatted. My cherished experience was over, the moment was gone, incredibly, silently, without even the casual rustling that she had appeared with. How do they do that? I’ve always wondered. How can a bull elk with a forty-eight inch antler spread walk between aspen saplings far closer together than that, and do it soundlessly? Humans have no such talents. We fumble, stumble and cry out. We fear, we betray ourselves.

We scare the very things we seek.

It was far past dusk, whatever that time is called when the shadows darken, depth perception leaves and paranoia shows itself. The nocturnal prickly porkies appeared in ever greater numbers, dropping down to the soft, dead, needles, unafraid. I was too far from camp, doing the very things I described above, snapping branches, announcing myself to anyone close enough to listen, disturbing their peaceful world.

What I lost that night was irrelevant, what I experienced is hard to track and controversial to identify. ~J 6.6.2025

Caravan Writers Collective can be found here and they’re an immensely talented, creative and diverse group that, if you want to delve into a community that is passionate about the written world and the one we live in, take a look! I’m rolling along with them, that much is certain and look forward to when I have more time to commit.

You know you can always share my work, should you find it worthy….thanks.

Holly Starley, Marya Hornbacher, Matt Smythe, Paul Corman-Roberts

The tallest and loudest thing in Cambridge is our boatyard’s new crane. Change is the only constant.