In other words
If you go out in the woods today...
Do bears eat little girls?
My five-year-old is convinced bears would eat her—with ketchup and cheese. An Emerenne-burger au fromage.
I tell her that when I was her age, I lived in a converted loggers’ bunkhouse in prime bear country near Prince George. Our ‘house’ had no water, one window and endless outdoors.
In the morning, after Dad drove off to work and before Mom and the siblings had shaken off their blankets, I was out the door and into the woods. During all those escapades into the wilds, I was never once eaten by a bear. In fact, I never even saw one, one-on-one.
Oh, they were there. Once, my sibs and I were playing in the yard when a mother bear and two cubs crossed the road toward us and jumped our ditch. That momma bear stood up. My mother stood up. Momma bear had the tooth-and-nail advantage, but my mother had the advantage of being slightly crazy from having her little girl wander off into bruin-infested bush while she was sleeping. Mother raised her broom and upped the ante. Momma bear dropped and ran.
Can you imagine?
Although I survived my formative years with bears picnicking all around me, I eventually morphed into a city girl. After some decades of concrete thinking, I moved back to a house in the woods.
If you live in the forest, you will live with bears.
My husband told me not to tell the kids, but we have a well-used bear trail running through our property, complete with a mother bear and, yes, two cubs. The people who lived in our house before us were trapped in the back of their moving van as the then resident bear checked out their goods. The day after we moved in, friends laughed about the pair of bears hanging out at the end of our driveway the morning before.
Our place is hairy with bears, but I have yet to see one. Maybe that’s why they disturb me; I have a deficit in my Ursa-detection system. I can see them fine on the side of the road, but the moment they set foot on my property they disappear.
Were I to see a bear in the yard, I’m sure my first thought would be, “how nice that man and nature can coexist peacefully.” My second thought would be, “where’s the broom?” Strange that their very existence gives me hope as well as the jitters.
Those bears on the cover of this issue aren’t cute (well, OK, they’re cute), but before we anthropomorphize them into Pooh Bear and his cousin Ted, remember that they’re mammals with teeth; they eat ants and berries and salmon. I live on their trail. As long as my kids aren’t between us, I defer to the bear.
When we disarm the bear by calling it ‘cute’, we mentally pull its teeth and claws and make living next door to it bearable. It’s much more exciting to acknowledge its wildness.
When my kids go outside to play on our 10 acres, I tell them to scream and shout, make as much noise as you like. Kids should be outdoors. They should know what it is to live in bear territory. They should not be afraid; they should understand and appreciate the totality of this land, including its wildlife (see, I know the theory). It’s part of the charm of the place: the great outdoors is where the wild things are, and should be.
I’m not the only one in the family who started out a bush baby. My husband, Hans, spent a chunk of his early adolescent years walking the woods, shadowing bears when he was lucky enough to see them.
Our friend and Northword editor, Paul Glover, spent many years appreciating the outdoors, living off the grid on the back of Hudson Bay Mountain, and later in the Suskwa (Bear River in local First Nation dialect) Valley. His brother, Todd, and my Hans spent many long days ridge-hiking in the Bulkley Valley. Judging from her ridge-hiking article, our Queen of the Charlottes, Heather Ramsay, also owns a well-worn pair of hiking boots. They all have marvelous bear stories to tell.
Of my numerous children, one is a natural-born naturalist. One just loves to be outdoors, so long as it facilitates his physicality. Another would rather be fishing, and yet another hanging with the horses. And one stands at the window at least once a week and sobs loudly for all the bears to hear, “I… hate… the… woods!”
This issue is about conquering your fears—learning how to live with your bears—be they the literal four-legged variety, or the metaphorical kind: economical, medical, emotional. It’s about passionate people who ‘go for it’, whether ‘it’ is bear-watching, moose-baiting, or turning out raunchy gaunchies (sort of like teddies). It’s about beating cancer, about getting kids off the streets.
The bear symbolizes the north and why many of us live here. If you’re not convinced, look up at the night sky to the big dipper and draw a straight line up the right side of the dipper’s ‘bowl’ and keep going till you hit the north star. Of course, the big dipper is also known as the saddle in the constellation Ursa Major. What could be more northern than that?
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