The bear was silky and peaceful, snuffling around an empty camping lot. Coming down the hill from the bathrooms, I stopped short and whispered to my daughter, “Let’s walk back a bit.” She cooed, entranced by the wild animal not fifteen feet from where we stood. I watched, child in arms, and wondered if I could hold a well-fed bear back if we retreated into the toilets and it wanted to join us, perhaps to drink from the faucet like the tiger who came for tea.
Quickly, the peace erupted as people started shouting ‘Bear!’ and cars blasted their horns to scare the beast away. The bear ran this way and that, a cacophony of hollers and honks accompanying it around the campsite. It raced right across the patch where we were set up with our friends; various kids burst into hysterical tears like characters in a Victorian gothic novel.
Then the bear disappeared into the woods and night fell. Darkness made its glossy black fur invisible and it was easier for our brains to pretend the bear wasn’t there. As we settled into our sleeping bags, my daughter said “Poor bear, she just wanted to get back to her kids,” which was a comforting take on the situation — despite no actual evidence it wasn’t a hungry teenager — and one I was happy to reinforce as we tried to sleep.
I have found it hard to write for a couple of months. Some middle of the night ideas occurred to me, then fell to the wayside. The world has felt too desperate and scary: Palestinian genocide, ICE raids, attacks on trans rights, ripping Medicaid away from sick kids, ongoing cruelty from powerful leaders. And I’ve let life unspool its reel a little as we get closer to the end of the school year. Plus there have been highs woven into the ongoing death scroll playing out on social media: my husband’s TV show launching to rave reviews in the UK, playing Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza as a family till my knuckles are raw (damn that groundhog card), running to the top of a mountain with friends as the sun sets on a trail lined with Mountain Laurel, letting the puppy lick my face in the morning like one of those gross dog moms I used to despise. Truthfully, I have often been able to get on with things while all the atrocities are happening, which is necessary but confusing.
Now the bear may have snapped me out of my trance. As lifelong movie fan, I get to finally be that cliched middle class protagonist, the one who’s overthinking life and a bit uptight, who then has a near death encounter with a beautiful scary animal in rugged nature and can suddenly see a path forward to reconnect with fellow humans and find true meaning. I like to think I am more Billy Crystal in City Slickers than Reese in Wild, because I am a sucker for double denim.
So this is all I have right now.
Nature is magnificent. It keeps growing and evolving. It gallops faster than us and swims for miles without coming up for air. It bites me quite a bit (mosquitos, not the bear). Weeds keep extending, inches every day, throughout my yard. Volcanoes keep bursting forth all over the world, after decades dormant; the earth shouting ‘back the fuck off’ to tourists with fanny packs who represent our entire race. Nature is stronger than us, and that is how it should be.
Kids are incredible. They learn new things with the same velocity and ease I eat peanuts after a glass of wine at 6pm. They find things I find terrifying wonderful. They fart with such joyful abandon I wonder if farting might actually be some sort of therapy that could overtake shroom journeys. They sleep in the back of cars in a way I dream of sleeping if I finally get myself to the doctor for some of those HRT patches. They make me enjoy being awake more.
And life will always surprise you. If my mum had a slogan tee, it would say ‘Nothing lasts longer than a few weeks’. This is obviously not true of things like marriage (hopefully) and presidencies (mores the pity) but she’s been right about a lot of things — my moods, baby sleep regressions, spots on my face, friendship rifts, work stress. Whatever it feels like right now, life will inevitably keep moving, and changing, and showing you new things.
I didn’t expect to meet a bear this weekend, or to have my 7 year old in my arms when I did, or to feel safer and stronger because she was there.
I’m glad I saw the bear. Even though I’m pretty sure it wishes it hadn’t seen me. There’s this card game — sadly named ‘Top Trumps’ (from a bygone era when trump was just a word and not a signal of dictatorship) — where you have to compete on categories. It kills time in airports or waiting for food. We have the ‘Predator’ set at home. Which predator is worse, the worse wins, and ‘deadliness’ is the ultimate category. Who is more deadly, shark or crocodile? Lion or rattle snake? Humans always win. It’s the guns.
In my movie, the one where I’m the slowly unwinding protagonist on a journey of self exploration in the woods wearing denim shorts and a denim shirt, I would tell everyone to stop shouting and flailing and scaring the bear. I would let the bear pad slowly over, and I would cock my head to the side as it communicated with us, baying and roaring. ‘Be kind,’ the bear would tell us. ‘Only take what you need. And stop killing kids.’ And I would march straight to the president and make him stop.
I’m not in a movie. This is life, and its more complex than that. But the bear was real.