Nothing I Can See Scares Me. What I Can't See...

I’m looking into the woods from the end of my driveway. The wind is blowing due west so the pine trees beside me howl like organ pipes and do nothing to keep me sheltered.  At least the wind is at my back and not stopping my breath. It’s a balmy twenty-five degrees and my hands feel relatively warm bare and taking notes for what I’ll type later.

I’m looking into the woods and thinking of Kathy Ayres, her bears and the one bear, somewhere out there, I’m sure is looking for me. I don’t know why that bear would want me, but I know it does.

Kathy has published a book of essays titled, Bear Season. I’ve read some of it as a class assignment and have been to a reading where she read from her book. Kathy loves her bears and keeps her distance. She’s seen them countless times. She studied bears and knows their needs and habits. I’m pretty sure she can even tell them apart.

I’m looking into the woods and seeing farther in than I can any other time of year. The bare trees are farther apart since the loggers came so I can see farther than I could before.  I see the other side of the valley, the small pond at the bottom and the abandoned car beside it. There’s a gas well I see through the remaining trees and the enormous house a mile away the trees and gas paid for.

            The forest isn’t ours. It borders my yard and belongs to other people. The swath from our yard to the base of the hill and the valley bottom belong to my neighbor next door. The owner of the enormous house owns the valley’s far hillside and a chunk of land behind it. I felt as safe as the French behind the Maginot Line. I knew the steep hillside and wetland at the bottom meant nothing could be built. I never thought about the forest being destroyed.

I can look into the woods in the day or night and see anything that moves silhouetted against the white background. Its motion accentuated by the unmoving flora.

I’ve seen pictures of bears eating apples in one neighbor’s yard and standing on the porch of another. I walk my little dog before dawn on the edge of the woods that reach our street. In the dark between the trees are shifting leaves or worse silence that every one of my footsteps erases the sounds in. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or read, “They are more afraid of you than you are of them.” I doubt it.

My dog is oblivious to everything he isn’t sniffing. He’s walked up to groundhogs, bunnies and deer with no reaction or semblance of caring. So what happens when he doesn’t see, hear or smell the bear?

Now isn’t the time of year for seeing bears. They are smarter or luckier than us and they spend the harsh winter months hibernating. I wonder if they dream of spring with the same fervor I wish for it.

Not a new poem, but it tells my story:

Midnight Stroll

Bare branches battle in the dark.

Their fencing echoes with my footsteps

in uncountable rhythms. The gravel betrays

my uneven gait as I pause or spin

to stare ahead or behind in the darkness,

even into the trees that send dry leaves

scuttling across the road

distracting me from noisy secrets

the forest holds too close to my throat.