Tag Archives: caves

I think I have been here before.

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.

A moon bear to replace me while I sleep.

2 Replies

That the sun has such a lovely complement in the sky, a calm partner who takes care of the forest while the sun goes down to rest or plan or whatever else the sun might do when it falls, is something I have always admired. Sun goes down. Moon comes up. Moon goes down. Sun comes up. So on and so forth, in lovely sync. You can even sometimes see them both at the same time. It is one of the few predictable shows of the forest. The sun will go down. The moon will come up (though, once in awhile, it does not, but that is okay, everybody needs a break).

Sometimes I wonder if the sun or the moon even knows about their respective opposites, though. Does the sun know, or even care, that the moon picks up its work during the cool, gloomy nights of the forest? And the moon? Does it realize that we get most of our warmth and light from the sun? Does it care?

I have a feeling that the two are completely unaware of one another, which makes me wonder about any possible complements I might have that I am unaware of. The idea of some moon bear out there in the forest, doing bear things that I do during the day just so the forest can have some kind of bearness going on even while I rest, is very intriguing to me. I would love to know that bearness similar to mine is being represented in the forest even when I am unable to represent it.

I stayed out late recently to try to find out. I walked about the forest as the surprisingly bright moonlight flooded the forest floor and guided me. It was nice to feel the cool night air, but it was unfortunate to not stumble upon any such moon bear. I found no bears at all. I found no moon-anything at all. The only moon there was was the moon itself. I entertained the idea of maybe all the trees I saw being moon trees because of their overwhelming darker, calmer colors, but then I remembered that was just because they were not bathed in sunlight.

I went back to my cave. I slept. I woke up wondering if I had just missed the moon bear. Maybe it was looking for me, the probably sun bear, at the same time I was looking for it. Maybe it was taking its rare break from its duties like the regular moon does ever so often. Maybe the moon bear exists and we are not meant to meet. Maybe it is possible to see us at the same time, at the right place, at the right angle, but we can never see one another. We just chase each other instead, never actually meeting.

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.

To stay warm, use the warmth of others.

3 Replies

The forest can get cold. Sporadically cold. The coldness of the forest can be unpredictable and angry. Avoiding the cold is important. Being cold is almost as bad as being hungry, and it is not nearly as simple to avoid as hunger. Hungry? Put a thing that is food in your belly. Cold? The solutions are much more complex.

Often, I hope being in my cave is an easy way to avoid being cold, but that is simply not the case. The cold, rough surface of my cave floor is unwelcoming and vicious toward my defenseless belly (even with its lovely, fuzzy fur). My cave sends me out into the forest, seeking better places for warmth.

Human caves seem, as I have discussed numerous times, welcoming and warm but are absolutely not welcoming. They are warm, though. The few times I have managed to enter a human cave have been incredibly warm. That warmth is always cutoff by shouting, though, so it is, in a terrible kind of way, worse to experience it since it is so quickly snatched away.

Human caves sometimes have metal things behind them that have bursting little suns in them. I have no idea why humans simply keep these little suns in metal things near their caves, but they are incredibly warm and incredibly dangerous. I have ruined the fuzziness of my fur by accident on these little sun things many times. How can something be so warm but also so angry? That is just how the sun works, in my experience. It will bake fur to a comfy temperature right before leaving red marks on the skin beneath.

Warmth can be hard to come by. I almost always end up back in my cave, having exhausted the potential warmth outside of it. Recently I got to my cave and found three raccoons, a very small opossum, and maybe a squirrel (it was hard to see so it could have been a bundle of tails, who knows) huddled in the corner, their trembling little bodies pressed up against sharp rock of the cave wall. They did not move as I got closer. I slumped beside them and aimed my belly toward them. I scooted closer. One raccoon bit me, but I was not offended. I settled into the corner with them, and their little warm bodies made my belly fur feel comfortable and at ease. I hope they felt the same way, but I had no way of knowing. When I woke, they were gone. We kept one another warm for awhile and then went on about our ways and days. I hope they come back when it gets cold again.

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.