Brothers from Afar - Writers Forum

cowboyclown · 02-16-2008, 11:16 PM

Author(s) Name: Kevin/cbc
Title/Working Title:Brothers From Afar
Rating:G , around 2000 word count.
Genre:Outdoor Life
Disclaimer(s):All mine based closely to my real life
Summary: Relationship between one man and one bear

Additionally: Originally web published story at the Motley Fool in 2002 . I wrote this work on behalf of a friend in L.A. This is an original working piece that with revision could become a non-fiction work but for now I simply wanted to get it posted. Any advice is always appreciated and this story is close to my heart and strikes closely to the nature of a clown...
...as they say potential insight to the life and times of a cbc... seeing as how this is the first worked posted here...

~~~~~

I can honestly say I love the fall. True winter can cover us with a magical coat of glistening beauty, and spring brings with it life renewed, but there is something that speaks to me during the moon of the ripening berries.

Being a product of my environment I have spent a lifetime in solitary existence and also I suppose, in part to my introvert nature I am often alone even when I am not alone. But because of my quirksome nature, experiencing the completion in one of our life’s yearly cycles, this season we call fall, I rediscover I am never really alone but instead I am but a piece and a participant in this process we call life.

Autumn is the most sensual of times for it speaks to us through not just one or two senses but all of our capacities equally. Our pallet is full for the seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, of another harvest of life’s yearly cycle. With its arrival comes anticipation for change and completion. And too, with autumn comes a stimulus like no other season to stir memory.

A final burst of rainbow color seems to cloak autumn’s flurry of activity of all animal and human beings burning its arrival forever in our minds. Man hastens to finalize a years worth of work that becomes a measurement of his success. In turn, our animal friends respond to cooler temperatures, shorter light, and to their various calls of nature, so that each species might survive the moon of the cracking water and complete again the circle of life. And often lessons offered for those who choose to pause and indulge in this changing of seasons may learn wisdoms about their own existence that could possibly help them when they reach the autumn of their life.

It was in the autumn time of the year and I guess the fall of my youth that I discovered a bear cub. I had been back riding a mountain draw when I spotted the lone, very blacklegged, grizzly in the distance. I knew of the existence of a massive old female grizzly but this was not her that I saw on this day. I knew full well that sometimes the old large female ranged in our area for I had spied her a few years earlier on a spring day horseback ride near our remote mountain home. On that day those three years previous, the sow grizzly bear should have been what caught my attention because in my estimate she was huge and must have weighted 800 pounds. But what I noted with a certain awed amazement was the little dark ball of fur no bigger than a minute that was following along at her heels. At the time it was early May, and I am sure I had happened upon one of this little guys first sashays from his birthing den.

Back then; I didn’t give much thought to seeing a grizzly and her cub, though that huge silver tip and her tiny black cub were the only two grizzlies I’d ever seen. And to be by myself and see them was an event that really never left my mind. Being only twelve at the time I am sure I was too young to consider such things as fear or danger. Yet thoughts and impressions about bears and especially of grizzly bears just seem to conjure certain images in one’s mind. As the seasons changed and the years went by I often caught myself remembering this chanced sighting and wondered what happened to that monster sow and especially that little guy. I often pondered and to this day still do, at how the little black cub’s mother reacted at realizing the presence this human being and his horse on a ridge above them not 100 yards away watching her.

Nothing; not one growl, nor a startled look, instead she simply nuzzled her cub with her great head, set down, then laying back, gently coaxed her babe with an almost dainty black nose up onto her bosom for a mid morning meal. We watched each other for a while, that bear and I, and as my horse cropped the new spring grass it did strike me odd that neither horse nor bear were concerned by the others presence. And I did wonder and I still do ponder what communication transpires between creatures. What signals are given so that one understands what the other is thinking?

Well there he was, that black grizzly cub; it was three years later, and in fall, and he was alone. So was I, except I was setting horseback just as I had been when I had first seen this adolescent grizzly when he was but a baby. In bear and human years, we were now probably about the same age. I, a lonesome kid at my uncle’s remote cow camp, and he, a fresh weaned grizzly facing the approach of winter for the first time without his mother. Just like his mother those years previous he seemed indifferent to my presence. But as fall progressed I viewed him often, as he seemed to hang in the valley our cowcamp was located in. I never told anyone about the bear cub’s presence and hoped no one would discover his existence, as I knew it would mean his death. For some reason I felt we shared some sort of friendship, perhaps a kinship of spirit, or maybe at least a mutual attachment to a place in time, and so that bear and I shared each others secret.

As busy fall days shortened, and green leaves of my world turned to gold, I often glimpsed my lonesome friend seeming to roam aimlessly across mountain ridgelines, and red willow filled mountain meadows. Sometimes I would pause from my duties of gathering straggling mountain cattle that were tardy in leaving their summer mountain home and I would set and watch the dark colored cub. Sometimes he would eat grass or splash in a little creek. Sometimes he would hunt mice in a meadow or lick ants from a rotten stump. And sometimes from a distance he would simply sit and watch me watch him.

It was a puzzle to me as to why that silly old sow weaned and left that gangly cub alone and so close to our camp. True, the mountain we were on is remote but there were other drainages close by more remote and that old sow claimed a large territory. In those days she was the only known grizzly for miles and even then she was clever and few knew of her existence.

A couple months later on a weekend back ride of the country in late fall I made some lame excuse to ride alone up a ridge behind camp and as I neared the crest I cut a track. A big bear track, it had to be her and she was not more than moments ahead of me. There are times when one senses being watched and this was one of those times so I followed her track carefully to a point on the ridge that overlooked a small valley on the backside of the ridge. And sure enough there was that black long geared cub happily mousing in the meadow hundreds of yards below me. I noticed by that sow’s tracks that she too had stood and watched unbeknown to the cub from the very spot I was now watching his antics. It suddenly came to me that the cub and I had never been alone. His mother had always been there watching us, all fall long. What’s more, she seemed to have sensed some sort of safety or company in me for her offspring. Whether a human presence kept other bears away thus protecting this cub or maybe instinct unknown, led her to appraise and trust a lonely kid I guess I will never know. What I do know is there was something quite satisfying in the realization I had spent a fall being company for and helping a lonesome cub adjust to a solitary life.

How long does a bear live? What knowledge does nature hold that we men with all our intelligence somehow overlook? Do we humans too often transpose our own thoughts and feelings on others and other things around us?

Perhaps, but perhaps too, this is a shared characteristic among species. Late this summer, this fall, I went back to that ridge as that remote spot on that remote mountain holds a grip on me. And though I have long since moved and live on other ranges this was only the third time in close to thirty years that I have been horseback on that ridge in the fall.
No sooner than I had gotten almost to the top of an old but familiar ridgeline and I saw a track, and at the same time the horse I was riding came to an abrupt stop. Not twenty yards on the trail ahead of me he stood watching my movements. It was the cub.

He’s, as I knew he would be. There are no tags in his ears or a radio collar around his neck. Though old he is still quite dark in color, yet he has amassed a lot of silver guard hairs on massive shoulders characteristic of his breed.

The large young sorrel gelding I rode seemed alert to the bear’s proximity to us but surprisingly unconcerned. For his part this king of the forests simply and briefly glanced my way seeming to note my arrival. I silently sat horseback in the autumn sun studying the old bear. Slowly, methodically, the grizzly rolled a large fallen and rotting pine tree from its final resting place. With a darting tongue too rapid to be seen, tiny ant eggs and grubs were expertly eaten. Once turning his metallic like dark back to me he paced a few yards to an almost buried boulder. Hooking the exposed tip of the boulder fully a third of his size with the long curved light colored claws of a left paw, he effortlessly rolled the massive rock like a man might kick a cobble stone. Just as quickly a deft right paw clamped down pinning a little creature that had been suddenly exposed. Lowering his huge dished faced head the bear chomped but twice and swallowed a mountain meadow vole. Seemingly indifferent to my intrusion my old neighbor on legs that still looked too long in proportion to his body ambled along. On pigeon toed feet, and in grizzly fashion he continued searching his meadow home.

We shared for a while the autumn sights and smells and sounds together then I simply turned and rode away. From my last backward glance I noticed he had quit licking ants from a dirt mound in that small ridge top clearing and was watching me. The way he held his head and watched me leave reminded me of how he used to watch me long ago. It was as if he remembered the actions of his mother that kept two kids who were of age to be alone, from being lonely. It was as if that once black fuzzy ball of fur, and that once lonesome gangly black kid bear, and now that lord and master of a land remembered the sights and sounds and smells of an autumn spent together which rekindled a fall time memory of our friendship from afar.