I went uphill for a while and then my body knew to head downhill and to the northwest. Probably I went well past my own borders onto I don’t know whose land. Very thick forest, trees bigger than mine, more pines and spruces. My eyes adapted to the dark more than I’d ever known they could; everything stood out clearly in that dim gray and pearl light.
After fifteen minutes or so I saw a special tree. It was about as thick as Earnest at the base, came straight up to waist height and then one wide branch, thick as I am, came out at a right angle, perfectly straight and horizontal for about four feet. Then it bent sharply and went vertical again, parallel to the main trunk, its high branches lost among the tree’s other limbs. I remembered that Pop called these “Indian trees,” claiming that in the old days the Indians bent saplings’ branches to point toward a route or place, then kept them trained that way, road signs in the woods. I climbed onto the horizontal part, feet up on the vertical turn of branch, shoulders against the main trunk. I kept making my long, whispered “shhhhhhhew.” It was crazy. Every fifteen seconds or so, I made that tiny quiet sound. No reason.
I lounged there. That feeling so much like fear was strong and it was wonderful—highly awake except no thoughts and no focus of attention. The woods so glorious, the moon very muted in the evergreens there. Windless. I lay, purposeless, just feeling the pregnancy of the night, expectant but of nothing I could name. Still making that noise.
After about twenty minutes, I heard a series of soft cracklings from the dark, growing closer, and a faint rubbing sound, something passing through brittle pine boughs. I didn’t startle, felt no fear, as if I knew it was coming. I just lay still, making my absurd noise. Then the opaque black at the periphery of my vision seemed to bulge and separate, and two big pieces of shadow came my way. They were bears, and instantly I knew they were the same ones who had visited my camp two years before, but much larger now. They were “my” bears. They rolled toward me and as they got closer I could just hear the faint deeper thud of their footfalls. Their muzzles were paler than their bodies and I could see them looking my way, round ears alert, then raising their heads to scent the air.
One approached me directly, while the other took a wider route. They made soft grunts to each other, quick short sounds like a noisy eater enjoying his food, but from deep within their massive bodies. I held perfectly still, lying in my wooden hammock, still making that absurd shushing whisper.
I can’t find words to describe my state. Not trepidation, more like intense exhilaration. It was definitely not fear, but the feeling, so much like fear, that is really just absolute alertness and aliveness. I knew them; I knew this was supposed to happen.
Within half a minute of their first appearance, they had moved right next to me. They looked up at me with benign curiosity. One came close and I felt its hot breath on my hand, which rested on my stomach. The other shouldered aside the first to do the same, then grunted amiably.
I kept making my sound, only now it was a sort of song I was singing about loving those bears so, so much and celebrating us meeting each other here and not being afraid of each other.
They were not alarmed to find me there, not even surprised. One partly stood and gripped the vertical part of my branch, its claws making a crackle on the bark, to sniff my feet in their wet socks. The other did the same on the main trunk of the tree to snuffle my face. Its face was only inches from mine, and its eyes were purely curious and devoid of ill intention. They seemed like human eyes, inhabited by an intelligent being, by a soul. Its huffing humid breath smelled rich but not foul. After a few seconds it got back onto all fours, took a few steps away, and sat down. It looked like a fat man resting, taking a breather for just a bit. The other bear came over to it and cuffed it lightly, affectionately, with one huge mitten of a paw.
They sniffed the air, then the ground, looked at me, looked around the woods, grunted a couple of times. The sitting one got back on all fours, came back to sniff my face again. Then it was time to go. They had other business to attend to. As they moved away, they craned their faces around to look at me one more time, and then quietly crackled back into the shadows, merged with them, and were gone. We had been together probably four minutes.
And I was finished, too. I stopped making that call. I was joyous, overflowing, and sated. I knew it was time to head back to camp. I had completed the intended errand.
I didn’t know the way, hadn’t paid any attention when I came, but I headed unerringly back here. I glided, my feet had learned the ground, I was sliding along in the silky diffuse moonlight.
Now I’m still so full of joy but my human self is flowing back into me again. Fatigue coming on, blissful, sleepy. What happened? How did I know to wake, to walk, to make that noise, to go to that particular tree? Never done anything even remotely like it. Never felt so at ease anywhere, never so, what, so guided? So released of intention, so without purpose yet so sure of what to do. Didn’t seek this, didn’t know there was this. I didn’t feel impelled by some instructive spirit being, just that emptiness with a story wound into it, me following the
