Bears

When my husband and I visited Alaska, we were walking on the sidewalk along the main road to Mendenhall Glacier. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted what looked like a large, black bear about ten feet away on the side of the walkway. I thought to myself, “That’s a strange place for the statue of a bear.” When the bear turned its head and looked at me, I knew it was for real. Stunned, I touched my husband’s arm and said quietly, “there’s a bear.” We turned quickly and walked in the other direction (not what you are supposed to do). After we had walked a short distance, I turned around to see if the bear followed us. The bear stood calmly in the middle of the road watching us, and then ambled off into the trees on the other side. Later, in one of the state parks, we passed a ranger talk about bears and stopped to listen. We learned that the safe thing to do when encountering a black bear is to walk backwards and make some noise. Thus, we came up with singing the song, “The bear went over the mountain…”

Meeting a Fox

One morning in the winter I opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. I sensed movement coming around the corner of the house. Suddenly a red fox appeared just a few feet away from me. The fox stopped and stood facing me. In awe I said, “Look at you!” We looked at each other for a few seconds and then the fox dashed away. It was a small fox with a darker red coat than the one I had seen running across the backyard. When I looked up foxes, the article said their coats are darker red in the winter. Also, they can make more than 20 different sounds!

Playing games with Otters

When my husband and I were kayaking on a lake in northern Michigan, he spotted two otters just ahead of us. We paddled slowly so as not to alarm them. We could see their heads as they swam a few feet ahead of us along the lakeshore. Suddenly, their heads would disappear and they would pop up a few yards farther along. They led us down to the end of the lake and then disappeared. It felt like they were playing a game with them.

Flowers

Here are some flowers mentioned in Bear Me in Mind.