Sunday, July 30, 2006

Seeing bears


Everytime I turned over in bed my thougths would float around and come to rest ontop of eachother in a different order. Then I'd have to sort them out all over again. A lot of different ways to look at the same thing. Vacant thoughts.

I hadn't had too many conversations with my uncle. Never had much cause to. "I seen a bear." he said at a family gathering. "You did?" I asked, "Where?". He looked around into the air as if seeing into a memory, and a place beyond where we sat. "Oh,.. up on the ridge outside of town." "Really?" I said. "What was it doing?" "It was going down the ridge in front of me... It was a very unusual bear." "Really." "It had an unusual pelt; brown, tan... It was a cinnamon bear."

I don't know why I feel a sense of loss over something that I never really had and never really wanted. It's just greed that's all. Not really an empty feeling, more of a vacant feeling.

"He's always seeing bears." mom said. "Really?.. He told me a couple of years ago he saw a bear. " "Oh he just says that." she said. "I'm sure he did see bears, he worked his whole life in the woods cutting trees." I said. "Oh I guess." mom said. "Perhaps he is just telling a story that he remembers and it isn't important to him when it happened." I suggested. "Clifford says he sees too many bears." She said. And that ended our conversation.

Finally I felt myself falling into a deep sleep. As if I was wading deeper and deeper into the water and then fell into a dark hole, and went completely under black water. I found myself infront of the cabin in the dark. I was looking for something I had left outside. And then I saw something move in the dark. It was a bear coming up the hill. It woke me up out of my new found deep sleep. I've had that dream in different versions several times. And a bear did come up the hill one night as I watched. It was going to the orchard.

I got up and made some coffee and decided to take the skiff out into the bay. The water was still this morning and I did some fishing and took this photo as the sun came up. I split my time between fishing, drinking my coffee and taking photos. The morning was more restful than the night had been. I caught a whitefish, but I let it go. It was very happy to swim away.

2 comments:

Diane Lowe said...

In literature, recurring dreams usually mean something. My Decadence/Fantastic literature professor has a whole lecture on the importance of dreams (in both fiction and real-life) and Freud's ideas on dreams (which, I think, was slightly before Freud's "everything is a phallus" theory).
Don't worry. I can't sleep at night either. Your sunrise photo is beautiful.

don said...

I think I'm a little worried about running into another bear at night up there. I came face to face with one out on the boat dock one year at night, and I had another one start to run at me on a morning bike ride. That time I had grizzly strenght pepper spray but I didn't stick around to see if it would work. The bear was about 100 yards away and when I went around the corner I think it gave up the chase.

The bears come into the orchards and down to the water at night this time of night. I haven't seen one, or sign of one yet this year. I did see one a few miles away and took a photo of it.

I usually sleep pretty well but I also had something else on my mind. Or it might have just been the weather.