There Goes the Neighborhood

“People and bears have been like magnets to each other throughout our evolution, drawing and repelling in mutual fascination. When the bear is gone from our mountains, the heart is cut away. It’s a privilege to live where we can still be frightened by bears.”

O’Clair, Armstrong, Carstensen, _The nature of southeast alaska_

Last night I was at a dinner attended by a bunch of Juneau friends and a couple who had just moved here. The host asked us each to give a piece of advice. Her husband said something like, “Don’t be scared of the bears.” And his father, a remarkably nimble man in his 80s with a cabin on Admiralty Island (“Fortress of the Brown Bears”), said softly, “Speak softly to them.”

At the risk of going all Timothy Treadwell here, I’ll say it’s kind of exciting to get news of the first bears’ emergence this season. I’ve yet to see any signs of them on the Big Tree Trail, but just knowing they’re out there changes a lot. We’ll soon begin walking with a bell and bear spray, knowing full well neither of us is top dog on the trail.

Like much of America, Juneau is mainly black bear country. The males, last to den, are the first to emerge. Females, who may have given birth to cubs while sleeping (how ’bout that trick, mothers?) won’t emerge until more snow melts and more food surfaces for the cubs.

Here in Juneau suburbia, we’ve had at least one resident bear who forages inside of cars. I remember asking Tim some semi-accusatory questions as I was applying touch-up paint to my old truck, thinking he had been down a narrow brushy road (no doubt projecting from my own adolescence), when I realized the scrapes were–like those music scales across the chalk board back in elementary school–perfectly bear-claw spaced.

I’m mainly posting to log the first appearance in the ‘hood, wondering with a twinge of trepidation, what stories might be ahead. (I won’t embarrass Katrina by again telling the story of the time she ran out of her boots in the mud at Boat Harbor when a bear we never saw crashed through the alders above us.) Instead, I leave the last words to O’Clair, Armstrong, and Carstensen.

“Bears infest our imagination and quicken our love of the land. Comic, ominous, endearing, disgusting, incredibly beautiful, bears are our own wilder selves. When conversation [or dog blog writing fodder] lags, we revive it with bears.”

O’Clair, Armstrong, and Carsten, _The Nature of Southeas Alaska

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A few Cedar-inspired moments from the week…