Tag Archives: bear stuff

I am always at least a little scared.

It is true. I am always at least a little scared.

Many things frighten me for many reasons. There are far too many to list now and here, but here are a few key scary things that are particularly scary:

Shouting
Yelling
Screaming
Being shouted/screamed/yelled at
Misplaced rocks

There are many more, of course, and I tend to focus on these scary things often. They constantly plague my bear brain as I wander throughout the forest. Most of my interactions and decisions are even rooted in these scary things, despite the fact that these scary things are not interested in my every interaction and decision.

So why do I do this? Why do I let very reasonably scary things take such control over me and my life in the forest? I earn nothing in return. The scary things keep being scary even if I try my hardest to avoid them. To some extent, their scariness has an even extra scary element to it because of the control I allow these scary things to have. To add to the list of scary things:

Letting scary things control you

I am not certain as to how I can change this dynamic. I know it needs to be changed, though. Letting scary things get the best of me serves nothing, not even the scary things themselves. I wish it were as easy as simply ignoring the scary things, but I do not believe it is. Often, it is very difficult to convince my bear brain to not think of a scary thing. Even though I do control my bear brain thoughts and ideas, they do tend to stray and when they do, they tend to stray toward scary things.

How can you conquer something that can seem to have such control over you?

I suppose, however, scary things do not have direct and endless control over the interactions and decisions I make, despite those interactions and decisions being rooted in my avoidance in scary things. Perhaps this is where I need to make a change or at least try to make a change. The scary things are always there. They are always in the forest, and they are always in my bear brain. However, despite their scariness and their influence, scary things cannot make me do anything. It is a difficult path to navigate, but if I do not try, the scary things win something they do not even seem to want to win.

I am a bear.

If you would like to try being a bear, why not read some of the bear adventures available on this very site? The newest adventure is all about safety!

For any questions or comments directed at Bear, feel free to write to him using this email: justasinglebear@gmail.com

You can also now use Tumblr to address questions to Bear. Also, you can find bear photos and such on Bear’s Instagram, and don’t forget to “like” Bear on Facebook.

Not all birds are nice.

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Not all birds are nice. I am sorry if this is a controversial statement, but after much consideration, I have come to the conclusion that not every avian creature has my best interest at heart. In fact, some birds are downright malicious toward me for reasons I have not yet discovered.

The first bit of evidence to support my claim presented itself quite awhile ago. I was sitting under a tree branch outside my cave, enjoying the cool shade and thinking about things I like to think about when I hide from the sun’s heat (being a bear, the migration of squirrels, do squirrels migrate?, wait, what is migration?), when a hawk (at least, I think it was a hawk) swooped down and thrusted its sharp feet at my face.

Why did the bird (I am pretty sure it was a hawk) do this? Had I insulted it? Was there food beneath me and the bird wanted me to move? Was the hawk disappointed with my lack of knowledge regarding squirrel migration? Can birds read my thoughts?

There was no way for me to know. The hawk fled away as quickly as it had swooped in. At the time, I wrote the encounter off as a misunderstanding. Perhaps birds spend so much time in the air, they forget how things that live on the ground (me) do not enjoy being swooped upon.

But a similar encounter happened just last night. Another bird (probably a hawk again) swooped down into my cave as I slept and spent the night screeching at me. I had not invited the hawk in nor had I asked for some sort of horrible wake-up call. The hawk had simply taken it upon itself to come into my home and yell at me until I left my own cave. At first I thought maybe there was some sort of ownership dispute regarding my cave, but I then remembered that birds (especially hawks) do not live in caves. Also, it was definitely my cave, I am sure of that.

I stormed back into MY cave and demanded that the hawk leave. After some more screeching, clawing and flapping, the hawk fled.

I did not sleep the rest of the night. The whole incident was just too unpleasant. Instead, I decided to lay in the mouth of my cave, eat the eggs I keep finding in the tree by my cave, and watch for more malicious, unprovoked avian attackers.

I am sorry for whatever I did (if anything at all). I just wish all birds were nice, but so many of them do not seem to be.

I am a bear.

If you would like to try being a bear, why not read some of the bear adventures available on this very site?

For any questions or comments directed at Bear, feel free to write to him using this email: justasinglebear@gmail.com

You can also now use Tumblr to address questions to Bear. Also, you can find bear photos and such on Bear’s Instagram, and don’t forget to “like” Bear on Facebook.

I think I have been here before.

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Even though I spend all of my time in the forest, I feel like I have not explored very much of it. Sometimes I will walk for a long time in one direction, hoping to feel the excitement that comes with treading unexplored territory, but I usually get too scared or intimidated by the immense size of the forest to go very far in any one direction. I end up back in my cave, enjoying its comfortable and familiar damp pointy walls.

In an attempt to challenge myself and explore more of the forest, I recently tried fighting the urge to turn back at the sight of the unfamiliar during one of my brief forest excursions. I walked away from my cave in a direction that was not toward the river or my favorite tree or the very interesting looking rock I like so much. I went in a direction that was unfamiliar, and I just walked.

And I kept walking.

Aimless but attentive, taking in the sights and the sounds of the forest as I went.

The more attention I gave to those sights and sounds, the more I began to feel like everything I was experiencing was very familiar. I walked until the sun was almost ready to retire into the trees past my sight, and I did not feel like I had seen anything new. It was all very lovely, for sure. I do adore the sights and sounds of the forest, no matter how frequently I experience them, but everything felt more familiar than I had anticipated. Usually that far into a walk, I would be ready to run in whatever direction I had come from, but where I went felt safe and known. Especially when I got to a cave. It was a nice cave. It was damp and rocky and comfortable. It had a delicious and soft bed of moss in one corner. Another corner had a fine collection of rabbit skeletons. There were some leaves spread about. It was wonderful. It was familiar.

Was it my cave? It felt like my cave. It smelled and tasted like my cave. I had walked away from my cave, though, so I was confused. What was I supposed to do? I did what came naturally to me: I slept in the cave. When I woke, it still felt like my cave. When I went outside of the cave, it felt like the outside of my cave.

Either I had just walked back to my cave by accident or I had stumbled upon an exact replica of everything I knew. I was not sure which was true, so I licked the pile of moss in the corner and napped a little longer. It felt right, and, really, either way, I felt like I was at home.

I am a bear.

If you would like to try being a bear, why not read some of the bear adventures available on this very site?

For any questions or comments directed at Bear, feel free to write to him using this email: justasinglebear@gmail.com

You can also now use Tumblr to address questions to Bear. Also, you can find bear photos and such on Bear’s Instagram, and don’t forget to “like” Bear on Facebook.

Maybe I should be more mindful of my surroundings.

I do not know where my thoughts go when I am done thinking them.

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My bear brain is quite active. I have thoughts and ideas and memories and other unidentifiable things going on in there practically all the time. It is rare my bear brain feels switched off, and even when it does feel that way, I usually end up thinking about how it feels that way, which switches it right back on.

But all of these processes that go on in there are not going on all the time at the same time. That would be overwhelming, I am sure, so my bear brain tends to a task or thought or an anything at all one at a time. That makes everything more manageable, of course. I am, however, often bothered by the idea that these thoughts and such just go when I do not need them. It bothers me simply because I do not know where, exactly, they go.

Everything in the forest can be touched and moved and smelled, so it is usually quite easy to keep track of the comings and goings of these things (except squirrels for obvious reasons). Thoughts are not like that. They do not have a cave they head home to when they are done for the day. They do not wait around in a perceivable place, anticipating your next need for their use. I have no idea where they go. Some can get memorized, which I guess is as close to a cave for them to go home to as there gets, but even that is not tangible. Even those can just go.

And when they do decide to go they are gone.

Sometimes these thoughts never come back. I frequently lament the loss of a thought, wishing it had stayed a little longer so I could commit it to memory, but most do not. It would be nice to know that they at least go off to a nice place. Somewhere warm and safe. But part of me believes that they go on to nothing. They simply stop being. I do not like that thought, and it is a thought that does not really go away like others do.

I try to hold onto the important thoughts. I try really hard to remember the sorts of thoughts that make forest living easier, but I am sure I have even lost some of those. And when they are gone, they leave nothing behind but a strange, fleeting empty feeling. Then again, maybe they can come back and I am simply unable to recognize them. Maybe thoughts can come to my bear brain, seemingly new to me, and recycle themselves. But who knows.

I am a bear.

If you would like to try being a bear, why not read some of the bear adventures available on this very site?

For any questions or comments directed at Bear, feel free to write to him using this email: justasinglebear@gmail.com

You can also now use Tumblr to address questions to Bear. Also, you can find bear photos and such on Bear’s Instagram, and don’t forget to “like” Bear on Facebook.

How I handled a bee I saw after it saw me: a series of mistakes that led to a strange triumph.

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As the air gets warmer and the forest gets greener, it is clear that spring is shaking the forest loose from the harsh, extensive grip that winter sometimes seems to have. It is, generally speaking, a welcome change in my daily forest interactions. The mud from the rain is nice. The air is warm but not wet yet. Trees seem to enjoy it. Flowers certainly do (and you can eat those, which is a bonus).

The forest seems slightly more pleasant in the spring than it does during other times of the year.

Until you see a bee.

I have seen a great many bees in my lifetime, and bees and I generally have an understanding: I will keep sniffing things and ignoring you and you will keep being a bee and ignoring me. It is reasonable to me, and most bees are quite polite about the policy. It is best, for all creatures involved, if we ignore one another.

Today, though, I admit, I failed. I failed to ignore a bee.

I saw the bee.

And then it saw me, its deep, midnight gaze piercing through my very bearness, tearing its way through everything I have ever thought I was. That moment lasted a small eternity, if that is possible. In that moment, I obsessed over the worst possible thing that could happen as a result of this encounter: stinging things. If you have never been stung by a bee, consider your life a lucky, fulfilled one because being stung by a bee might be the worst thing that can happen to anyone who encounters a bee. It is such a devastating, awful event that when a bee stings you, it rids itself from the forest entirely, likely because of the guilt it feels for bringing such terror to another creature’s life.

I did not want to get stung. And I did not want this bee not be a bee anymore (even if it was terrorizing every bit of my sensibilities). I did what any normal creature would do… I yelled at the bee. I was hoping this would scare the bee, but it only yelled back, its harsh buzzing sounds echoing through my fuzzy ears, a shrill reminder of the pain to come after the inevitable stinging.

So… I did what any normal creature would do after yelling at something with no success… I ran at it… In the moment, it felt like the right thing to do. I knew I was much larger than a bee, so I figured it would be terrified of my largeness multiplied by my speed.

It was not.

It hovered above me, as if to mock my grounded paws. It had the high ground (or, air, I suppose) and was surely about to strike. I, again, did what I thought any normal forest creature would do… I closed my eyes and gasped, my mouth sitting wide open just long enough for the bee to fly right into it…

I panicked. I ran. I shook my face violently. And then I spit. The bee hit the ground, covered in my saliva. I felt terrible. What had I done to this poor bee, its only crime being its sight of me?

Its tiny wings fluttered, shook my spit from it, and it unceremoniously took flight. Before I could ask for its forgiveness, it was gone, back in the depths of forest it came from, away from me.

I was shaken by the event. I felt a strange mix of guilt and triumph. I fought a bee, which usually ends with at least one causality, and we both lived to tell the tale. And I think I even won.

I am a bear.

If you would like to try being a bear, why not read some of the bear adventures available on this very site?

For any questions or comments directed at Bear, feel free to write to him using this email: justasinglebear@gmail.com

You can also now use Tumblr to address questions to Bear. Also, you can find bear photos and such on Bear’s Instagram, and don’t forget to “like” Bear on Facebook.

I think there might be too many leaves.

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Calculating the ever-growing number of leaves that seem to fall from trees is an impossible task. Just when you think they have all fallen and that there could not be any more lingering up in the branches, more come.

I tried to consolidate the number of leaves in the direct vicinity of my cave one afternoon in hopes that it would make the opening of my cave more appealing to forest creatures who pass by. Rob (the squirrel) calls this “curb appeal.” He also suggest I trim some of the low branches of nearby trees, but I decided this would be cruel since the trees did nothing wrong and did not deserve such a punishment. Trees are pure entities who only have good will toward everything else in the forest (even the awful act of shedding leaves is actually beyond their control). If anyone or anything was to blame for the number of leaves on the ground, it was the wind…

I knew the wind was to blame after my initial leaf consolidation.

I had seven tidy piles collected that resulted a nice grassy clearing to lay in. The sun beamed through the bare branches to heat my newly cleared spot. It was refreshing to have the warmth beneath by belly meat. Before I could drift off to sleep, a rush of crunchy orange and red things pelted me in the face.

I sprung from the clearing to see that the piles I had collected were launching a full assault against me and their driving force was, beyond any doubt, the wind.

I felt betrayed. The wind was often the source of delicious smells. Why would it turn on me with such malice?

I wondered if I was hasty in blaming the wind. Maybe there were really just too many leaves.

There was only one way to find out. I would turn the leaves into something constructive. With the help of Rob (the squirrel) I skewered leaves on fallen twigs and used bits of twine from the dumpster to cinch them together. Eventually I had enough to begin forming the twigs into shapes. The shapes eventually formed images. From the leaf skewers I formed the shapes of many things in the forest: rabbits, squirrels, rocks, trees (ironically enough), me, and even a really big leaf.

From the chaos I created something wonderful. Rob (the squirrel) even lauded my work (even though he said that if the squirrel I made was him, it was a bit fatter than he’d like it to be).

With an overwhelming sense of pride in my work, I decided I had deserved a nap. I went into my cave and fell asleep the moment my head hit the dirt floor.

Hours later, I awoke to find my work ransacked by raccoons. They had destroyed all the shapes I had made (perhaps I should have thrown just one raccoon into the mix).

I wanted to be angry about what had occurred, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was struck with an epiphany.

Too many leaves was not the problem.

Vandal art critic raccoons were.

I am a bear.

If you would like to try being a bear, why not read some of the bear adventures available on this very site?

For any questions or comments directed at Bear, feel free to write to him using this email: justasinglebear@gmail.com

You can also now use Tumblr to address questions to Bear.