Darn bears

My sister reminded me of this.

When I was in Alaska I saw lots of bears. There was a five mile stretch of dirt road between the hotel I worked at and...um...for the lack of a better word, town. I biked that road quite a bit and in the earlier months of the summer I'd occasionally come around a corner and see a black bear on his rump with leaves in both hands and plenty more hanging off of his lips. Eye contact would be made. I would realize that if I put on the brakes I'd stop smack dab next to what I knew was a dangerous animal (although, to be honest, most of the bears I encountered looked like they were in a harmless stupor of vegetarian over-indulgence). I also knew that to ride faster would be to say, "Wanna play tag...with your teeth?" So I just rode causally by like I was passing a light post or a parked Ford or, well, anything but something that had a strong jaw and large claws that could rip me open if the mood struck.

I also saw bears on lone, quiet hikes I'd choose to go on. Once I thought a bear was going to charge me, but instead it scrambled to the top of a tree and swung like an upside down pedulum. Another time I looked up from the railroad ties I was tramping along to see a bear's behind scampering away. And then he stopped. He turned. And he looked at me. I yelled at him to go away and stay away with all my angry heart while I did the only thing I could do by walking steadily on.

Bears and bears and bears I saw. I must've been one bear-seeing gifted gal because some of the kids native to the town were asking me how they could see bears too. "Huh? You grew up here and...? What is it you want to know again? Really? Well I guess you go outside...and then from there...yeah, uh, it happens."

Looking back, as the barefoot and pregnant type now, I can't believe how willing I was to go out on my bike and to go for long lonely hikes on my own and to go camping on islands and sleep with no tent all by my lonesome with all those darn bears I kept on seeing. Maybe I got too used to it - I started to believe in bear disinterestedness. But that can't be true, because every time I saw one my heart rate went up, my spleen spewed forth anger, and I felt like letting out a good d$%# it. No, I think I just had the kind of guts that come from having no responsibility to anyone or anything. Not that I was conscious of it, but in the part of me that decides whether or not to freak out about the possibility of death or a mauling, I'd deduced it wouldn't be that big o' deal.

I can't say there aren't times I don't long to be that girl again with her devil-may-care, bring-the-bear-stories-on type of attitude. But I'll tell you what, that girl is gone, gone, gone. It all started when I got married and realized I loved my husband...a lot. And it got worse when I had my first baby and realized I loved him to a point of pain. Then came another kid and another and here comes another again, and I love every doggone one of 'em almost more than I can hold in one five foot two body. So now I look both ways before I cross the street and then I look both ways again and maybe one more time. I check to make sure all the doors are locked in my house a couple of times each night. If I think about me dying I get into a real panic trying to figure out what they would do without me.

I told my husband the other night how Alaska was in my mind again and he said, "We should go there for our tenth anniversary." And I'm excited about that. I hope we do it. I'm just kinda scared of the bears.