I Saw A Bear

I went away for three days last week, up to a cabin in the woods that is owned by a couple I am lucky enough to know who have not been going there much lately because they just had a baby. It’s in Catskill, New York, where Cus D’Amato taught Mike Tyson how to box. It’s very secluded. You can’t see any other houses. So it’s an excellent place to go to be by yourself and write apology letters to people from your past who probably don’t even remember you. It is definitely a cabin, as opposed to a house. Very rustic, no frills. It was built in the ’60s by someone who was obviously not an architect, and its tilted beams and cracked foundation have had me wondering, on past visits, whether the place might suddenly collapse on my head. There’s no heating or television or telephone. (Though it does now get cell-phone reception, which is new this year — they must have just built one of those cleverly disguised fake-tree phone towers nearby.) The walls are thin. There are screens on most of the windows, but lots of bugs still get inside. And some animals, too. A years-long battle against the squirrels who like to make nests beneath the roof and chew through the plaster has, I’m happy to report, apparently been won by the humans. (Congratulations, humans! Oh, and on the birth of your child, too!)

But on Wednesday, I was visited by a bear.

It was around noon. I was standing in the kitchen, looking out into the woods through the window to the porch, when I saw a dark shape moving slowly toward the cabin through the trees. It took me a minute to be sure what it was. But sure enough, it was a bear. A black bear.

Needless to say, this was very exciting! There are few things in life that I enjoy more than watching wild animals. And bears, as any reader of the Awl will surely know, are some of the awesomest wild animals around. A large part of me was very happy to be seeing what I was seeing. But another part was less happy. One of the reasons that bears are so awesome is that they’re so dangerous. We all know the stories: from Grizzly Man to the horrible attack on the British scouts in Norway this past weekend. Bears kill people.

I have seen bears in person before. Up around Catskill, even. (And once, when I was little, at a scenic lookout point in Glacier Park in Canada, I saw a bear jump over a stone wall onto a picnic table where another family of tourists was having lunch. It opened its jaws and roared to scare them — which worked very well; I’ve never seen people scatter so fast — before settling into eating the food they’d left.) Generally, though, my previous bear sightings have been through the windows of a comparatively safe-feeling car. Here in this flimsy-walled, thin-windowed cabin, it felt quite different.

At first I thought the bear was a cub. Which is little consolation, because when you see a bear cub, you assume that its instinctively defensive mother must be nearby — and displeased and made extra defensive by your presence. But as the small-looking bear came closer and closer, rubbing its head against the branches, eating the blueberries that grow at the edge of the yard, it got to looking bigger. It was not a cub. It was the size of a large German shepherd — except of course much thicker.

I was enrapt. I didn’t want to take my eyes off it. But I crept into the living room to make sure the door was locked. (Then, imagining the bear crashing through a back window, reconsidered: Would that slow my escape? I calculated the distance up the hill to where I’d parked the rental car, and thought about the fact that I was wearing flip-flops. Still, I decided to leave it locked.) I picked up my cellphone and dialed my wife at her office as I walked back into the kitchen.

While it was ringing, I thought about the video I’d seen recently bout how to survive an attack by a black bear. You’re supposed to fight, as opposed to playing dead — which is advised in the case of a grizzly attack. I scanned my surroundings and made a mental note of the location of the largest knife in the knife rack, a meat cleaver hanging above the stove, and, being that these things were so glaringly short-handled, a set of barbecue tongs and a spatula. (Ha ha ha! “No, not the spatula!” says the 300-pound bear.)

The phone rang until voice mail picked up. My wife was away from her desk or on the other line, as is always the case when you’re making what you think might be the last phone call of your life.

“Hi,” I said, after the beep. “There’s a bear coming through the woods toward the cabin.” I could hear the giddy trill in my voice. “Umm… I hope he doesn’t try to come in! Call me back!”

I watched as the bear ambled into the yard, which is not a big yard, so I had a good close look at it. It was so cool. I would have taken a picture or a video, if I knew how to use my phone to do anything except make phone calls. I am embarrassed to admit how stupid I am with tech gadgets. Oh! I know how to send text messages. I could have sent the bear a text, I guess, one minute before I was supposed to meet it at a restaurant for dinner, telling it I was running late and would “B there in 5!” when I knew it would B more like 15. But, as is apparent, that wouldn’t have added much to this blog post.

It was clear that the bear didn’t know it was being watched. It was just doing its own thing, sniffing around, checking things out, pawing at rocks and logs. It had very small eyes, and a long snout, and the golden fur on its underbelly was matted and twig-strewn. It hung out there for ten minutes or so. Maybe thirty feet away, through the window.

My wife called back. “I don’t like that,” she said. I told her I knew where the spatula was. She made fun of me. We got off the phone quickly. I didn’t want to be making any noise. “Don’t get eaten by a bear,” she said.

Then the bear came closer, right up to the edge of the cabin, where I couldn’t see it. I didn’t like that. Didn’t like the thought of feeling a tap on my shoulder a minute later and turning to see it standing right next to me. It had appeared to be moving in the direction of the front of the house, so I went quickly back in to the living room, and looked through the window of the door. Nope. Couldn’t see it. I ran on my tiptoes back through the kitchen, to another window with a view of the back yard. Pulling the curtains to the side, I peeked out and was both relieved and startled to see the bear sniffing around the stairs there leading up onto the porch. It was ten feet away from me. I stood very still.

It turned its head, though. It had seen me. We stayed there looking at each other for a moment. I wondered what it was thinking. “Who is that bald guy?” I guess. I was thinking about how this bear kept looking larger and larger the closer up I saw it. Which shouldn’t have been surprising, I suppose, but the lesson of perspective was driven home by a recurring mental image of my viscera in the bear’s mouth.

Then the bear turned around and moseyed back into the woods in the direction from which it came. It wasn’t in any hurry.