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Accepting snakes: why I want to but I cannot.

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Snakes are horrifyingly terrible terror serpents who I assume only exist to make life for all other living organisms in the forest more difficult and exhausting.

I apologize for that very aggressive introduction, but snakes and I have a long, horrible history, and that history is almost completely based off snakes intruding on my personal space (mentally and physically) and harming me (mentally or physically).

When I push my emotions to the side and truly contemplate snakes as creatures in the forest (as they well deserve), I know they exist for reasons that are likely too complex or important for me to thoroughly understand and process. Snakes have a purpose. I know this. However, I wish I knew that the importance of this purpose outweighed my aggressive loathing for them.

I cannot figure out their purpose, though.

Why are snakes here and why does the forest need them and why can they not just leave me alone and exit my mind and my cave and never come near me ever?

I asked other creatures of the forest why snakes existed. I received varying answers. A opossum screeched at me (I assume she is afraid of snakes, too). The anthill I asked seemed neutral on the subject, responding mostly in silence and very organized rows of many, which makes sense given that ants seem to only care about ants, dirt, and how ants interact with dirt. Rob (the squirrel) (from whom I did not expect a rational or just answer) said that snakes have only one purpose: to be questioned about by me. He then laughed at me and stole an acorn I had found.

I also asked a lizard. My thinking was that lizards look quite similar to snakes (except for the legs and discernible body/tail and generally pleasant disposition), so perhaps lizards had more insight on the subject. The lizard said that everything has a purpose in the forest, and that often the purposes are very subtle and involve food. He added that these purposes only exist in the construct of the forest and have no value outside of the forest and, therefore, meant almost nothing on any scale larger than the forest so making cosmic sense of anything was ultimately futile and a waste of time. I liked the first part of the answer (it was difficult to consider the second part because of the food part of the first part), but it did not help. Are snakes food? Do snakes make food? Should I eat more snakes?

Snakes are a part of life. They always have been. They always will be. No matter how much I want snakes to not be a part of life, there is no changing these facts. I have to learn how to live with snakes. Or I have to begin eating all snakes (which I do not want to do because they have pointy teeth and the few times I have eaten snakes I felt a deep, uneasy essence in my being that I was unable to get rid of for days, even weeks on in).

Maybe I can just try to talk to snakes. I do not think I have ever done that. Maybe understanding snakes is like understanding any other creature: you just have to get to know them personally. And not eat them or assume they exist only to ruin your life.

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

Also, thank you to everyone who participated in the survey-based adventure Bear embarked upon on Twitter last week. Thousands of you voted to help him decide what basic decisions to make about his day. It was very fun, and he hopes to find time to do it again soon. 

PS

I talked to a snake and it bit me.

 

Branches and roots and bark and being a home for others: I want to be a tree sometimes.

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tree roots (2)

I like being a bear, but I would be fibbing if I said I never dreamed about being a tree. Trees are noble, silent, and everseeing and probably everknowing and smell great. Trees are tall and impressive. They taste good. They are fun to chew on. Trees are everything to everyone forever and never complain about having to fulfill that duty all of the time.

I like trees.

I am not a tree, though. I will never be a tree. And maybe that is for the best, but I do like pretending I can be a tree. One of my favorite pastimes is digging my pointy claws into the soft earth and pretending they are tangled roots to my tree being. I dig in and settle myself and let the wind and the elements run through my fur and my ears.

I pretend I can see everything in that spot forever. I imagine the seasons passing over me constantly and consistently. I imagine my fur as gnarled branches reaching toward the sky, acting as homes for birds and bugs and bees and leaves and light and anything else that is light enough to stay there when it wants to. I close my eyes and think about existing in the same spot for what must feel like always and experiencing that single spot for so long that you know everything about it.

Eventually the soil gets uncomfortable, though. I realize I am not a tree and shake the dirt off my toes and go back to being what I know I am: a bear. I will never truly get to experience the longevity or evereverythinging of treeness.

I only know how to experience bearness. I suppose that is not too horrible, but I do constantly find myself trying to know existing beyond what existing as a bear has to offer. I wish I could be like the raccoon I ran into while sleeping in a dumpster a few days ago who was chewing on his own leg and foaming from the mouth and (maybe even) the ears: I wish I could just accept who I am.

But I cannot. I think I always desire the -ness of another being, and I will probably always have a hard time accepting my own bearness. I can still pretend, however. I can still take a few moments out of my day to hurl my claws into some dirt and pretend that I am a tree.

Even if  I am just a bear.

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

Perhaps there are infinity bears?

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Counting is hard sometimes. I often find myself wondering why there are certain numbers of bear parts that make up my body. I know that I have four legs to help promote mobility and stability. I have two eyes to help me see (and count things).

But not everything about me seems to make sense. Some of my parts are simply uncountable. For instance, I often wonder how many strands of hair make up my fur. I have tried to count them many times but have failed miserably. Usually I lose track or fall asleep or run out of visible patches of fur (I once employed Rob (the squirrel) to help count all the fur on my back, but he wound up counting acorns instead; it was very confusing and unproductive).

My teeth are also difficult to inventory because I cannot see them. I have felt them with my tongue, but my tongue is an unreliable accountant.

I assume that the number of hair and teeth I maintain is an appropriate amount for bears and won’t fluctuate too much in the course of my existence. But if that number does change, do I become more or less bear? I hope not. I hope my bearness retains all the qualities that make me a bear despite any missing teeth or newly grown fur.

The perplexing nature of numerical values is also applicable to the forest itself. I know how many Rob (the squirrel)s there are. One. Just one. That much I know. But I have no idea how many trees there are. I’m sure I would eventually be able to count them all if I kept a thorough tally, or I if were to mark them so they would not be recounted, but other matters seem to take precedence over this goal: food, naps, rolling in dirt, more naps, etc.

Even if I could count every tree in the forest, what would it accomplish? I know that I would rest a little easier knowing that number, but would it shed any light on the number of other things around me? Probably not. What do trees know about the quantities of other things in the surrounding world? Very little, I would guess (no offense, trees).

Much like my teeth and fur, there are things in the forest that change so rapidly, they would be impossible to count. Take clouds for example. They shift and float across the sky without warning. They change color and disappear. How could anyone be able to keep up with that sort of behavior? Perhaps clouds simply do not want to be counted.

I am easy to count. I am one bear. One, single bear. I do not know how many other bears there are. I assume more than just me. Perhaps there are bears in other places beyond the forest. Or maybe even beyond the clouds.

Maybe, just maybe, there are more than just one of me. There could be infinite versions of me across infinite versions of the forest. If this is the case, counting my legs and fur and teeth would be acts of futility. How do you count to infinity?

I suppose counting things shouldn’t be so worrisome. Rob (the squirrel) says he never counts things and believes there is simply enough things around at any given time. I suppose, on some level, he has a point.

The hypothetically infinite numbers of me have yet to come crashing down on one another, so I guess things are as they should be.

Rob (the squirrel) ate three of my acorns.

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

Please do not scream at me.

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Screaming (2)

There are many things that scare me: loud, unidentifiable sounds; loud, identifiable sounds; not being a bear; being too much of a bear; loud, angry opossums; fish who have sharp teeth; the idea of trees possibly ending one day and me having to understand a forest without trees and considering maybe it would be easier to see everyone from a distance but then again maybe it is nice not being able to see everyone from a long distance; drowning; hunger; Rob (the squirrel) (please do not tell him).

I could go on.

And I will for a moment: birds that stare at me aggressively; tents collapsing on me while I am sifting through them; possible anti-bear sentiments that various woodland creature or maybe even rocks hold but are not vocal about while I am in their presence; rocks maybe not liking me; overthinking rocks; disrespecting rocks by considering my analysis of them “overthinking”; not having fur; getting trapped in a dumpster.

There is one thing I really do not like, however. Something that bothers me more than any other fear or anxiety I have. A thing that makes me worry about leaving my cave in the morning.

That thing is other things screaming at me.

High pitched, loud shouting sounds coming from any being and directed toward me makes my fur stand up straight and my back shiver. It fills my mind with unease and worry.

Please.

Do not scream at me.

The strange thing about my burdensome worry is that I have only been screamed at by a few things just a handful of times.

Once, a tree and the sky screamed at me practically at the same time. I was out in the woods, licking a rock, when the sky made a terrifying, violent screaming sound. Before I could even process how terrified I was, a tree right by me began to scream too. Then it fell over.

I ran.

I ran as fast as I could to my cave and hid there until I napped.

I still do not know why the tree and the sky screamed at me in such a manner. Maybe they did not like the way I was licking that rock. Maybe they did not like me. I do not know, but it upsets me to no end.

A human screamed at me once, too.

I once found and explored a large, strange object near a dumpster I frequent. At first, I thought the object was just a large rock, but I could smell some kind of delicious food within the rock. I looked for an entrance or some kind of opening. After some searching, I found a way into the rock. It was not a rock, though. It was actually a cave. A well lit, strangely decorated cave. This cave was amazing. It had a tiny, personal sun inside of it. It also lacked rabbit skeletons and, instead, had various colors plastered all around the walls of the cave. This cave was fascinating.

And it had food!

There was another, much tinier, cave inside this large cave and it was filled with food! I started to rummage through the tiny cave. It was more bountiful than any dumpster I had ever encountered.

Then, the screaming began.

A human was hurling loud, high pitched screeching sounds at me and making very aggressive hand gestures at me.

I was more terrified than when the tree and the sky screamed at me.

Again, I ran.

I ran to my cave.

It did not have food or lovely colors or caves inside of caves, but it also did not have anything screaming at me.

I still worry about screaming. Though it so infrequently happens, I still have anxiety about it and feel like it could happen again at any moment. I sometimes try to think about why those things screamed at me. Why make awful sounds at me that just scare me? Did I deserve those sounds? I have no idea. Was I merely misinterpreting these sounds? Were they not even directed toward me or about me? I do not know.

But I do know the sounds. I do know how much I hate them. And I do know I do not want them to happen to me 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

Am I too much bear?

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bear echo (2)

Am I too much bear? Does my bearness have a maximum capacity that I sometimes overflow with fuzziness and sniffing dirt and eating acorns and rolling in grass (you know, bear things)? It is hard to say. I often feel that I am exactly the right amount of bear. While my weight seems to fluctuate according to sticks I like to step on, perhaps measurements of bearness cannot be collected in common physical data. Maybe bearness is something intangible. A feeling you can’t put your paw on.

I took to surveying some fellow forest dwellers to get their input on my bearness. The results were mixed, as one would expect.

Badger:

‘Q’

‘You are a bear…I suppose a bear of an acceptable size. Does that answer your question? No? Then I don’t know what to tell you. I’m going back to digging. Sorry I couldn’t help.’

Rob (the squirrel):

‘Q’

Rob (the squirrel) replied with that strange barking sounds squirrels make and scurrying up a tree. Then he threw an acorn at me, but I dodged it. This seemed to frustrate him so he ran away. I am still trying to interpret this answer.

Rabbit:

‘Q’

‘If I tell you, I will need a favor in return. You have to promise. I’ll give you all the info you want regarding your own bearness, but there is something you much help me with. Agreed? Good. Shake on it…’

Apparently my bearness was too much for the rabbit. He stopped talking (and moving) after our pawshake. I even waited for a long time for him to say or do anything again. Nothing. I suppose I bored him.

Another Rabbit:

‘Q’

‘I’d love to answer your existential question but I’m in quite some rush. A friend, and I use the term “friend” loosely, stole a rather impressive gathering of apples I had amassed in my burrow and hid them from me.’

‘Q’

‘Sure I can tell you what he looked like. He looked like me. Long ears, furry tail, etc. Seen him? No? Okay, well if you do, you come find me. Thanks.’

Opossum:

‘Q’

‘Hhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeccccccccccccccc  Hisssssssssssss Rrrrrrgrgrrgrgrgrg Heeeeeeeeececeecec.’

I probably should not have asked my question while the opossum was in a dumpster.

Raccoon:

‘Q’

‘Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’

I probably should not have asked my question while the raccoon was in a dumpster.

Dumpster:

‘Q’

Unfortunately, the dumpster did not have a verbal or physical response. It was actually a nice change of pace compared to the hissing.

The sky:

‘Q’

‘Am I too much bear bear ear r r r’

The sky, too, did not have an understandable response, but I did hear my echo in the vastness of its everything above. As my words bounced off the sky and spread as far my ears could hear, all throughout the forest, I realized that the degree of my bearness is actually irrelevant compared to just about everything else in the forest. This is why I received few revealing responses. Nobody is worried about me being a bear or how much of a bear I am. Only I am worried about such things. Only I care about my bearness. It is a little sad to realize how small I am even when compared to the daily thoughts and opinions of (physically much smaller) woodland creatures. I suppose my self-important questioning deserved the hisses it mostly received. I want my being a bear to mean something, to be important on some grand forest scale, but it just is not.

It is a relief, too, though. There is no huge role to fulfill or some grand journey to pursue. I am just a bear. There is not much more to the idea than that.

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

Sometimes I wonder what is inside of me.

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sun heart

I can hear a lot of commotion in me. Things moving and beating and pumping. I do not know what any of it is or why it is there. I assume it is important, but I have no concrete way of knowing. I remember thinking about these things aloud in front of Rob (the squirrel) one day. I mentioned how I had no idea why my body made so much noise, and I said that I wanted to know what all of it was for. He told me that his body did the same, and that all living bodies do the same. Then he related a grotesque story to me about a time he slept next to an old, tired raccoon one winter night because it was warm. It was not warm the next day, and all the sounds and movement associated with being alive had ceased to be in the raccoon.

I asked Rob (the squirrel) why he had slept next to a raccoon in the first place. Was it just because of its warmth? His response was tossing an acorn at my nose and running.

His strange (but admittedly interesting) story did give me some insight as to why all this noise is inside me and all living things, evidently. Being alive meant noise. Having noise and motion and grumbles and tumbles inside of you meant you were alive.

But what is in there? I know whatever it is, it moves, but what is it? I have thought about this question for quite some time, and I have a few (completely unverified) theories.

One idea I have had is that everything in me (and presumably you as well) is just another smaller version of me. Perhaps there is a tiny me inside of me trying to understand what all the noise outside of me is. Maybe it too has the idea that the outside of itself is a bigger version of itself trying to figure out what is inside of itself. I like to think that there might even be a whole forest in there, something huge for the inside me to explore and understand. I hope there are not as many squirrels in there, however. The idea of a population of tiny squirrels inside of me scares me, though it would explain any time my body is ill in any way.

I have also considered the idea of there being a tiny sun in me. I like the sun, and it seems like an important part of the sky. It also keeps me warm, which is nice. Whatever is inside me seems to help keep me warm as well, and I believe it is safe to assume that all the bits and pieces inside of me are vital to making me me. Consider a tiny sun inside of your body, glowing and keeping everything warm. Does it go away at night like the sun out here does? Does a moon replace it, providing the smallest amount of light and warmth while I sleep? Perhaps the same inexplicable aspects of the sun that keep everything warm happen inside of me, all the time.

Of course, none of these ideas really hold up when I consider what little of the inside of me I have actually seen. Recently, I climbed a tree and misjudged a branch that I wanted to rest on. It snapped and I fell. It hurt, but I was fine except for a gash above my paw where I had landed on a very sharp rock. Red water flowed out of it. There was no tiny me or tiny sun gloriously oozing from my wound. It was just liquid, and it hurt.

I licked the opening above my paw, saddened by evidence contrary to everything I hoped about the inside of me. There might still be a sun inside of me. I still do not know for sure, but I do know it is nice to consider it.

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

A cricket slept in my mouth.

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cricket

I do not know how I look when I fall asleep. I like to believe that my pristine fur calmly rests against the cool rock floor of my cave while my heavy, slow breathing gently vibrates through the forest’s night air. According to Rob (the squirrel), who has watched me sleep many times for reasons he will not explain to me, my entire body twitches as I rustle around on the ground, tossing and turning throughout the night and making sounds that are somewhere between growls and desperate gasps for air. Regardless as to which one is true, I would think it must be difficult for any creature to find a reliable place for repose near me while I sleep.

Yet one has.

I recently woke up to find something sleeping in my mouth. At first, I was unable to determine what the lumpy, salty mystery in my mouth was. I was tempted to just eat it (as I do with most lumpy, salty mysteries I find in or out of my mouth), but something told me to stay my jaws and wait. After a long morning of an open, dry jaw, I finally felt the tiny intrusion slip from my face. After shutting my mouth to let a torrent of soothing saliva rescue my tongue, I sniffed the ground below me.

What I found was a small cricket.

Perhaps small is not the right way to describe it (I have no idea if this cricket was small by cricket standards, but I do know that all crickets are small compared to me, trees, the sky, and even most mice). It was definitely a cricket, however small or big it might have been. It made a lovely chirping sound at me and then hopped away before I could ask any questions.

I did not put much more thought into the situation for the rest of the day. I was glad I had not accidentally eaten the cricket, but I also found its intrusion to be a tad bit inconvenient and somewhat unsettling.

Night came. I slept.

Day came. I woke up.

The cricket was in my mouth again.

I did not wait all morning to see if it would simply jump out this time. Instead, my tongue was its alarm clock as I pushed the cricket out of my mouth. It seemed startled, it chirped at me, and then it went on its way.

I must have made my point. The cricket never slept in my mouth again. I, at first, felt no remorse for my actions against the cricket. It was okay to sleep in my cave, I told myself, but I found it difficult to abide one sleeping inside my mouth without my explicit permission.

As the thought lingered in my mind, however, I contemplated how I sleep. I have never once asked my cave (and is not audacious for me to claim it my cave?) if I could sleep inside of it. I have napped on top of many things without explicit permission: dumpsters, abandoned campsites, piles of leaves, moss, a family of opossums (only once and by complete accident and nobody was permanently injured), on tree branches, and even under the sky.

I have never asked any of these things if I could have the privilege of using their personal vessels as my personal bed. And many of these things (except for the opossums anyway) tower in size compared to me as I did the cricket. I felt no need to ask something so massive for permission to rest on or under or inside of it, so why would the cricket feel it had to do the same with me?

I began to regret my hasty actions against the cricket, and I even considered how easy it could be for me to experience the cricket’s plight. After all, what could stop the cave in which I sleep from one day choosing to spit me out as I had done to the cricket?

Nothing.

Should the cave do so, I would be forced to leave.

The night of the same day I forced the cricket from my mouth, I went to sleep with my mouth open. Intentionally. I was awake for quite some time, waiting and hoping the cricket would show up and rest where it once must have felt so comfortable.

The cricket never came.

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?

I found a chair.

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chair

The forest is cluttered with a variety of wonderful objects that are not native to the forest. Some of them are completely harmless (donuts, tents, wind). Some of them seem to serve no purpose to the forest (tires, chairs, strange birds). And some are downright bad for the forest’s overall well being (the deer across the river). Throughout my travels of the forest, I have found a great number of these curious artifacts. I almost always stop to inspect them. Sniff them. Lick them. Stare at them. However, no matter how I approach these objects, nearly all of my interactions with them have one thing in common: I usually accidentally break them.

I never mean to end the life of the strange objects I find in the forest, but I almost always do. Take, for example, a lovely plastic chair I recently stumbled upon. It was a beautiful red color, some of it fading into a more orange hue from exposure to the sun. It had to have been in the forest for quite some time, so I felt beckoned to examine it beyond a simple glance from afar.

I approached the chair.

It was still, so I was assured that any further poking around would not be met with some kind of violent reaction from the chair.

I sniffed it.

It smelled like dirt. It also smelled a little bit like insects (not any specific kind that I could detect).

I licked it.

Dirt. Again. Also insects. Again. I think I could taste the sun on it, too, but then again, I am not entirely certain what the sun actually tastes like (though I have my theories).

The chair was withstanding nearly every part of my normal investigation pattern: approach, sniff, lick. I only had one step left: sit. I frequently find myself trying to sit on new things I find in my ever vigilant search for the most comfortable things in the forest. Was this chair going to be comfortable? At the time, I had no idea, but I had to know.

So I sat on the chair.

It was nice for a moment. A brief moment. Then the tiny legs of the chair snapped and I found myself hurtling toward the ground. It was not a long trip from the top of the chair to the ground, but it was long enough to frighten me and send me running off into the forest. At the time, I did not know that this action was me actually killing the chair by accident. I had to run away just in case this was the chair’s way of trying to kill me on purpose.

I hid behind a tree for awhile.

When I felt like it was safe to come out, I did. The chair was still broken. Its sad cracked legs were shattered. Pieces of them were scattered around the forest floor. I felt guilty.

I put the broken chair through the same process of investigation as I had the whole chair (approach, sniff, lick, sit). This was to ensure that the chair did not change its mind about not being violently reactive to something after becoming a broken chair.

It did not break again when I sat on it the second time, but it was clear that I had left a significant amount of damage from my investigation.

I like finding new things in the forest. I like investigating those new things, too, but I wish I knew a more effective, less damaging manner of doing so. I am sorry, chair that I broke. Also, I am sorry, everything else I have sat on by accident or on purpose. That includes you, the opossum who was nesting in my moss collection. It was an accident, opossum. I promise.

I just want to know more about where I live, and I hope I can learn how to do so in ways that do not leave chairs and opossums upset and/or crushed.

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 sky is so violent but colorful.

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FIREWORKS

Just the other day, the night sky was screaming in color over its own black emptiness. It was extremely alarming at first. I was sitting in my cave, rolling the rib of a rabbit skeleton on the ground as I waited for sleep, when, very abruptly, a loud crashing sound echoed through the night sky and bounced off the walls of my empty cave.

I ran outside to check what could cause such a disturbance. My first guess was thunder, a sound with which I am familiar but still keeps me awake when it is being particularly cranky. But this sound was a little different from thunder. It was more continuous. More abrupt. More colorful.

When I got outside, the popping and crashing sounds came again. More this time, too. I looked up. The sky was filled with amazing colors that are not very common in the forest. The only things that come close to these colors in the forest are reptiles in various stages of anxiety, grief, or happiness. The sounds and the colors kept coming. Straight lines of white and gold zipped into the air. Each would then burst into a cloud of smoke and sharp looking color. It was hypnotizing. It was also terrifying. Unnatural yet oddly appropriate.

This was not the first time I have seen these strange lights and sounds, though. It happens on occasion, but it always takes me by surprise. I do not know where they come from or why they are ever here. I do not know why they are still slightly terrifying. I do not know why I like them so much.

The first time I remember hearing and seeing them is a distant memory at this point. I remember that my cave was still new to me. I had just recently found it (it came with several piles of lovely moss and a mouse who eventually died one winter later). I was trying my best to be comfortable in my new habitat when the violent sounds ripped through the sky. I was so terrified that I decided to put my paws over my ears and wait for the sounds to go away. After a long while, however, I realized they were going to keep going. I decided to investigate. The colors were so foreign to me then (just as they are now, frankly). I stared all night. They eventually died down, but I stayed outside of my cave until the sun rose. For a brief moment, I was hoping that the sun, too, would shout some violent colors in the sky. It did not. It made its usual warm, glowing color and sounds.

I still have no idea what causes these strange lights and sounds. I wish I did. I wish I understood their purpose and place in the forest. Maybe one day I will go following them. I will follow the sounds and the sights. I will try to locate exactly from where they are coming. I will make a discovery and expand my understanding of something strange to me.

Or maybe I will just let them continue being a mystery. A mystery which I will take pleasure in knowing that I will never really know anything about it.

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?

I stepped on something crunchy.

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bear paw

It is difficult for me to take the time needed to understand everything happening beneath my paws. As I walk through the forest, I surely step on many different living things: bugs, grass, dirt, glass bottles, and tiny sticks. All of these things are smashed and smeared by the tough, rugged skin on the bottom of my paws. Most of the time, I can deal with ignoring the sounds of these unfortunate beings, but sometimes they crawl through my ears and take unforgiving space in my mind.

Recently, I finally stopped to see what I could do about my intrusive paw stomping. As I left my cave, I took one step on the grassy ground and then immediately stopped. I then hurled my nose into the meeting place of my being and the ground. I searched for any living things. I shouted to all possible survivors, asking them to make some kind of sound to indicate that they were okay with my paw being here. I even asked the dirt that was being dug up by my claws how it was doing.

No response.

Not a single sound came from that tiny section of earth. For a moment, I deducted that I had just been overanalyzing everything about this situation. Nothing on the ground minds me being on the ground, too, I told myself.

I went on about my day.

A few paces later, I stopped in my tracks again and realized: the silence of the forest floor might have been caused by me. Of course no creatures made any sounds upon my request, I had been the one who silenced them all.

I ran back to the entrance of my cave and began to search for that first step of the day. As my paws slammed against the ground to make my way back to the origin of my destructive path, I mumbled apologies and begged for forgiveness. I even tried to keep my feet in my old tracks as to minimize the overall damage, an ultimately pointless effort as I ended up breaking several different plants by accident, not to mention the countless bugs and other lifeforms I likely disturbed or destroyed.

When I got to my first paw print, I hurled my nose into the dirt once more. I wanted to know what kind of mark I had left. Was it repairable? Did it leave the natives of that patch of dirt in disarray? Was I a monster? Did I need to spend the rest of my days in my cave, never stepping into the forest again? Could I live in trees instead? Would the trees mind that? Of course they would, they are trees and deserve to be left alone.

I could not find anything beyond the smashed dirt. I definitely killed the dirt in that part of the forest, but killing dirt to get by was something I had accepted a long time ago. I could not see any bugs, plants, or other creatures whom I had destroyed by accident.

I want to live as peaceful of an existence as I can. I know sometimes I will eat some bees or accidentally sit on a bird’s nest that got knocked down from a tree (I am so sorry, bird eggs), but I have to keep trying to ensure that my existence cooperates with everything else that exists in the forest. Everything (except for the deer across the river) deserves to live without being stepped on by something much larger than it. I hope dirt does not mind us all killing it all the time, but maybe that is how dirt lives its own peaceful existence.

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?