Saturday Stories. #30 Bears and…Bears.

Hi everyone! Well, it is kind of a mix of sun and clouds this morning and still continuing cool. It was just 45F (7C) this morning, earlier, but it has warmed up to 57F (14C) now. And we should hit a high of 68F (20C) by later this afternoon. Yesterday’s high was just 62F (16.5C). But it is supposed to warm up again beginning tomorrow and going throughout the week. And lots of sunshine.

That part will be nice for sure. Speaking of sunshine. It reminds me of a time years ago when I still had my cottage. It was a very warm day, which was a good thing as it turned out. I decided to go walking around the property, which was 162.5 acres (65.8 hectares) in size. On one part of the property there were some natural springs, several of them in fact.

More rainy day photos.

Each was in a hole about 4 feet ( about 120cm) across and 3 to 4 feet (about 90 to 120cm) deep. The water was crystal clear and very cold, about 39F to 40F (4C), and it would stay that way year round. So these holes filled with water never froze. Now, most were open and easy to see, but some had tree roots growing over them which over time had come to be covered with moss. That made the holes impossible to see.

I fell into a hole once because of that. On this day I was being careful walking through that area but it had rained the day before and the moss in that area was wet and slippery. As I walked across some tree roots I slipped and down I went into that cold water! Good thing it was a hot day. Some of these holes, however, had rather soft bottoms, and others were firm bottomed. This one was soft and I started to sink quite quickly.

We have had a lot of them this summer.

I grabbed the tree roots and started to pull myself up. But then I heard something, so I stopped and looked around. Off to one side of me was a bear! This was around noon, so it was a little odd to see one still active. I thought perhaps it was coming over to get a nice cool drink. I hoped that was not the case, however.

It was about a hundred feet away when I first spotted it, and for some reason it stopped and started sniffing the air. Perhaps it could smell human scent. But then he began walking again. I was getting nervous again. This was not a good spot to be caught. But then, no spot is a good spot to be caught by a bear. It stopped again and stood on it’s hind legs, sniffing. It was about 50 feet away now. Then it dropped to all fours and quickly walked away.

Much more than normal.

That was a relief. Then I thought I heard the lapping of water. At that point I realized what happened. The first bear moved away because there was another bear coming from the other direction. I slowly turned my head. Yep, that was the problem. It was that big, brown female. She seems to be the boss in this area, and easily the largest bear at around 600 pounds. She normally has a cub with her too, though I did not see one.

She was at one of the springs about 50 feet behind me. I can’t move or I will attract attention. The lapping stopped and I heard her walking. She just kept walking off to my left, not looking back toward me at all. She did have a cub with her too. I waited until she was out of sight, then I pulled myself out of the water. My legs were very cold by this time.

Still, that can be good, it keeps things nice and green.

It really wasn’t a long time that I was in the water though, it just seemed like it because of the bears. I decided that was enough exploring for one day and headed back to the cottage. I put some dry clothes on and sat in the sun to warm up nicely. We always did have a lot of bear activity out there. Oh well. Seems to be mostly cloudy now. Sigh. I hope you all have a great weekend and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2024 Steve McLeod.