Tree Talk
A big black bear & 2 cubs had hung around the firetower a week feeding on fiery red bearberries. One morning the mountain exhaled a breeze. Dandelion heads opened, ecstatic in sunshine. One cub nuzzled her mother’s fur shiny in the northern salmon sun. The other cub, with white patch on forehead nipped its sibling’s tiny feet. I decided to bring out my grizzly bear skull, a gift given me by a park warden after a female died from a tranquilizer dart. With bear skull in my lap, I sat down on my cabin porch. Suddenly, with bear skull exposed to the open air, the pine tree I was looking directly at started shaking furiously, the only tree of two hundred in the yard moving at all. The gentle breeze still blew all across the mountaintop but somehow wind galloping like Pegasus rapped against this lone crooked pine. The mother bear walked over & stood tall on hind legs staring with dark eyes at the tree as I watched, curious & transfixed, from the porch, bear skull still in hand. Who said bears had poor eyesight? When the one-tree tempest stopped suddenly as it began, Mama Bear fell to the ground feasting on sweet berries again and sniffing in the direction of my breathlessness. Later I placed my bear skull long term into that aging tree. The bear and I-- we rise like a windstorm from deep hibernations to witness these old trees talk.
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