August is typically blueberry infused — pancakes, muffins, pies; your list is as long as mine, I’m sure. But last spring’s late freeze has muted this summer’s berry harvest, and in its blue absence, I’ve been thinking about one of its other dependents: bears, a lifelong favorite animal.
A bird feeder pole bent by a bear in a Topsham resident’s yard. Courtesy of Sandy Stott
Even the casual scanner of news will have noted that bears keep showing up in unusual places these days, at least from the human perspective. Resurgent ursine populations and our human habit of building into woodlands has — more and more — made us neighbors. This was brought home to me during a recent visit to New Hampshire, when a bear showed up at dusk to root about the yard … and also drop off the poem that follows.
A local friend and beekeeper also pointed me to a June Facebook post of a wildlife cam’s night photo of a bear in Freeport. Eyes aglow, the bear looks straight at the camera. And a Topsham friend sent on a photo of bent-over bird feeder pole, courtesy of a motivated bruin. Surely, they are near.
This month’s column features a translation from Bear to English. Such work is unusual but on the increase as we (humans) seek to understand better our animal neighbors. It follows in the tradition of canine author Barkley Mayer’s “paw-scribed journal,” translated from Dog into English carefully and at great effort by his HC (human companion) Doug (“Appalachia Journal,” June 15, 1993, pp. 76-85).
My translation from the N.H. bear’s work may have robbed it of some of its grace, but I have tried to stay close to its ursine spirit. (Translator’s note: Bears, it seems, aren’t fans of punctuation; the world, as they see it, is of a piece rather than broken by pauses.)
‘Bear in Mind’
We’re having a moment it
seems in yards here and there
across the land wherever
woods draw near when we wander
onto one of your odd patches
all chemed-up to keep it
green O My God OMYGOD we hear again
and again and that makes sense
because we are after all a ripple
of dark fur and big enough
to eclipse the flowers or
the swing-sets and we move
with a grace our bulk belies
plus even as we barely use them
we’ve got incisors and the two-footed
world pays a lot of attention
to teeth to teething to being toothsome
plus you keep feeding the birds who can
fly I mean come on if anyone
can find food it’s the birds! but
yo (my newest pronoun) hey (old greeting)
they barely have to stir a wing to get seeds
and suet and … get this … oranges!
the orioles go nuts for them
and for us seed sure beats climbing
a beech and shinnying way out
to comb those bristly little nut-
pods off the high branches I mean
why not take a cylinder and shotgun
a whole sleeve of it you’d do
it too so we’re new in the neighbor-
hood and out here most of us are black but
let me tell you no one wants to see
one of our polar relatives from the north … now
there’s a bear to beware don’t let blondie
get near better stick with us
and get over our being near your yard
put some berries out forget to
clean the grill and sip a little wine
while we rumpus around in the bushes
bearly there and here and still near.
Always happy to receive bear stories and sightings at the email below. Share the berries.
Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chairperson of the town’s Conservation Commission and a member of Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com.
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