ALONE IN THE WORLD
Have you any idea how frightfully stiff one is after nearly five
months' consecutive sleep? Of course, a bear is not actually asleep for
the greater part of the time, but in a deliciously drowsy condition
that is halfway between sleeping and waking. It is very good. Of
course, you lose all count and thought of time; days and weeks and
months are all the same. You only know that, having been asleep, you
are partly awake again. There is no light, but you can see the wall of
your den in front of you, and dimly you know that, while all the world
outside is snow-covered and swept with bitter winds, and the earth is
gripped solid in the frost, you are very warm and comfortable. Changes
of temperature do not reach you, and you sit and croon to yourself
and mumble your paws, and all sorts of thoughts and tangled scraps of
dreams go swimming through your head until, before you know it, you
have forgotten everything and are asleep again.
Then again you find yourself awake. Is it hours or days or weeks since
you were last awake? You do not know, and it does not matter. So you
croon, and mumble, and dream, and sleep again; and wake, and croon,
and mumble, and dream. Sometimes you are conscious of feeling stiff,
and think you will change your position; but, after all, it does not
matter. Nothing matters; for you are already floating off again, the
wall of your den grows indistinct, and you are away in dreams once more
for an hour, or a day, or a week.
At last a day comes when you wake into something more like complete
consciousness than you have known since you shut yourself up. There
is a new feeling in the air; a sense of moisture and fresh smells are
mingling with the warm dry scent of your den. And you are aware that
you have not changed your position for more than a quarter of a year,
but have been squatting on your heels, with your back against the wall
and your nose folded into your paws across your breast; and you want to
stretch your hind-legs dreadfully. But you do not do it. It is still
too comfortable where you are. You may move a little, and have a vague
idea that it might be rather nice outside. But you do not go to see;
you only take the other paw into your mouth, and, still crooning to
yourself, you are asleep again.
This happens again and again, and each time the change in the feeling
of the air is more marked, and the scents of the new year outside
grow stronger and more pungent. At last one day comes daylight,
where the snow has melted from the opening in front of you, and
with the daylight come the notes of birds and the ringing of the
woodpecker--rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat!--from a tree near by. But
even these signs that the spring is at hand again would not tempt you
out if it were not for another feeling that begins to assert itself,
and will not let you rest. You find you are hungry, horribly hungry.
It is of no use to say to yourself that you are perfectly snug and
contented where you are, and that there is all the spring and summer to
get up in. You are no longer contented. It is nearly five months since
you had your last meal, and you will not have another till you go out
for yourself and get it. Mumbling your paws will not satisfy you. There
is really nothing for it but to get up.
But, oh, what a business it is, that getting up! Your shoulders are
cramped and your back is stiff; and as for your legs underneath you,
you wonder if they will really ever get supple and strong again.
First you lift your head from your breast and try moving your neck
about, and sniff at the walls of your den. Then you unfold your arms,
and--ooch!--how they crack, first one and then the other! At last you
begin to roll from one side to the other, and try to stretch each
hind-leg in turn; then, cautiously letting yourself drop on all fours,
you give a step, and before you know it you have staggered out into the
open air.
It is very early in the morning, and the day is just breaking, and all
the mountain-side is covered with a clinging pearly mist; but to your
eyes the light seems very strong, and the smell of the new moist earth
and the resinous scent of the pines almost hurt your nostrils. One side
of the gully in front of you is brown and bare, but in the bottom, and
clinging to the other side, are patches of moist and half-melted snow,
and on all sides you hear the drip of falling moisture and the ripple
of little streams of water which are running away to swell the creeks
and rivers in every valley bottom.
You are shockingly unsteady on your feet, and feel very dazed and
feeble; but you are also hungrier than ever now, with the keen morning
air whetting your appetite, and the immediate business ahead of you is
to find food. So you turn to the bank at your side and begin to grub;
and as you grub you wander on, eating the roots that you scratch up
and the young shoots of plants that are appearing here and there. And
all the time the day is growing, and the sensation is coming back to
your limbs, and your hunger is getting satisfied, and you are wider and
wider awake. And, thoroughly interested in what you are about, before
you are aware of it, you are fairly started on another year of life.
That is how a bear begins each spring. It may be a few days later or a
few days earlier when one comes out; but the sensations are the same.
You are always just as stiff, and the smells are as pungent, and the
light is as strong, and the hunger as great. For the first few days you
really think of nothing but of finding enough to eat. As soon as you
have eaten, and eaten until you think you are satisfied, you are hungry
again; and so you wander round looking for food, and going back to your
den to sleep.
That spring when I came out it was very much as it had been the
spring before, when I was a little cub. The squirrels were chattering
in the trees (I wondered whether old Blacky had been burned in the
fire), and the woodpecker was as busy as ever--rat-tat-tat-tat!
rat-tat-tat-tat!--overhead. There were several woodchucks--fat,
waddling things--living in the same gully with me, and they had been
abroad for some days when I woke up. On my way down to the stream on
that first morning, I found a porcupine in my path, but did not stop
to slap it. By the river's bank the little brown-coated minks were
hunting among the grass, and by the dam the beavers were hard at work
protecting and strengthening their house against the spring floods,
which were already rising.
It was only a couple of hundred yards or so from my den to the stream,
and for the first few days I hardly went further than that. But it was
impossible that I should not all the time--that is, as soon as I could
think of anything except my hunger--be contrasting this spring with
the spring before, when Kahwa and I had played about the rock and the
cedar-trees, and I had tumbled down the hill. And the more I thought
of it, the less I liked being alone. And my father and mother, I knew,
must be somewhere close by me--for I presumed they had spent the
winter in the spot that they had chosen--so I made up my mind to go and
join them again.
It was in the early evening that I went, about a week after I had come
out of my winter-quarters, and I had no trouble in finding the place;
but when I did find it I also found things that I did not expect.
'Surely,' I said to myself as I came near, 'that is little Kahwa's
voice!' There could be no doubt of it. She was squealing just as
she used to do when she tried to pull me away from the rock by my
hind-foot. So I hurried on to see what it could mean, and suddenly the
truth dawned upon me.
My parents had two new children. I had never thought of that
possibility. I heard my mother's voice warning the cubs that someone
was coming, and as I appeared the young ones ran and snuggled up to
her, and stared at me as if I was a stranger and they were afraid of
me, as I suppose they were. It made me feel awkward, and almost as if
my mother was a stranger, too; but after standing still a little time
and watching them I walked up. Mother met me kindly, but, somehow, not
like a mother meeting her own cub, but like a she-bear meeting any
he-bear in the forest. The cubs kept behind her and out of the way.
I spoke to mother and rubbed noses with her, and told her that I was
glad to see her. She evidently thought well of me, and I was rather
surprised, when standing beside her, to find that she was not nearly so
much bigger than I as I had supposed.
[Illustration: AS I APPEARED THE YOUNG ONES RAN AND SNUGGLED UP TO HER.]
But before I had been there more than a minute mother gave me warning
that father was coming, and, turning, I saw him walking down the
hillside towards us. He saw me at the same time, and stopped and
growled. At first, I think, not knowing who I was, he was astonished
to see my mother talking to a strange bear. When he did recognise me,
however, I might still have been a stranger, for any friendliness
that he showed. He sat up on his haunches and growled, and then came
on slowly, swinging his head, and obviously not at all disposed to
welcome me. Again I was surprised, to see that he was not as big as
I had thought, and for a moment wild ideas of fighting him, if that
was what he wanted, came into my head. I wished to stay with mother,
and even though he was my father, I did not see why I should go away
alone and leave her. But, tall though I was getting, I had not anything
like my father's weight, and, however bitterly I might wish to rebel,
rebellion was useless. Besides, my mother, though she was kind to
me, would undoubtedly have taken my father's part, as it was right that
she should do.
So I moved slowly away as my father came up, and as I did so even the
little cubs growled at me, siding, of course, with their father against
the stranger whom they had never seen. Father did not try to attack
me, but walked up to mother and began licking her, to show that she
belonged to him. I disliked going away, and thought that perhaps he
would relent; but when I sat down, as if I was intending to stay, he
growled and told me that I was not wanted.
I ought by this time to have grown accustomed to being alone, and to
have been incapable of letting myself be made miserable by a snub, even
from my father. But I was not; I was wretched. I do not think that even
on the first night after Kahwa was caught, or on that morning when I
saw her dead, that I felt as completely forlorn as I did that day when
I turned away from my mother, and went down the mountain-side back to
my own place alone. The squirrels chattered at me, and the woodpecker
rat-tat-tat-ed, and the woodchucks scurried away, and I hated them
all. What company were they to me? I was lonely, and I craved the
companionship of my own kind.
But it was to be a long time before I found it. I was now a solitary
bear, with my own life to live and my own way to make in the world,
with no one to look to for guidance and no one to help me if I needed
help; but many regarded me as an enemy, and would have rejoiced if I
were killed.
In those first days I thought of the surly solitary bear who had taken
our home while we were away, and whom I had vowed some day to punish;
and I began to understand in some measure why he was so bad-tempered.
If we had met then, I almost believe I would have tried to make friends
with him.
I have said that many animals would have rejoiced had I been killed.
This is not because bears are the enemies of other wild things, for we
really kill very little except beetles and other insects, frogs and
lizards, and little things like mice and chipmunks. We are not as the
wolves, the coyotes, the pumas, or the weasels, which live on the lives
of other animals, and which every other thing in the woods regards as
its sworn foe. Still, smaller animals are mostly afraid of us, and the
carcase of a dead bear means a feast for a number of hungry things.
If a bear cannot defend his own life, he will have no friends to do it
for him; and while, as I have said before, a full-grown bear in the
mountains has no need to fear any living thing, man always excepted,
in stand-up fight, it is none the less necessary to be always on one's
guard.
In my case fear had nothing to do with my hatred of loneliness. Even
the thought of man himself gave me no uneasiness. I was sure that no
human beings were as yet within many miles of my home, and I knew
that I should always have abundant warning of their coming. Moreover,
I already knew man. He was not to me the thing of terror and mystery
that he had been a year ago, or that he still was to most of the forest
folk. I had cause enough, it is true, to know how dangerous and how
savagely cruel he was, and for that I hated him. But I had also seen
enough of him to have a contempt for his blindness and his lack of the
sense of scent. Had I not again and again, when in the town, dodged
round the corner of a building, and waited while he passed a few yards
away, or stood immovable in the dark shadow of a building, and looked
straight at him while he went by utterly unconscious that I was near?
Nothing could live in the forest for a week with no more eyesight,
scent, or hearing than a man possesses, and without his thunder-stick
he would be as helpless as a lame deer. All this I understood, and was
not afraid that, if our paths should cross again, I should not be well
able to take care of myself.
But while there was no fear added to my loneliness, the loneliness
itself was bad enough. Having none to provide for except myself, I
had no difficulty in finding food. For the first few weeks, I think,
I did nothing but wander aimlessly about and sleep, still using my
winter den for that purpose. As the summer came on, however, I began
to rove, roaming usually along the streams, and sleeping there in the
cool herbage by the water's edge during the heat of the day. My chief
pleasure, I think, was in fishing, and I was glad my mother had shown
me how to do it. No bear, when hungry, could afford to fish for his
food, for it takes too long; but I had all my time to myself, and
nearly every morning and evening I used to get my trout for breakfast
or for supper. At the end of a long hot day, I know nothing pleasanter
than, after lying a while in the cold running water, to stretch one's
self out along the river's edge, under the shadow of a bush, and wait,
paw in water, till the trout comes gliding within striking distance;
and then the sudden stroke, and afterwards the comfortable meal off
the cool juicy fish in the soft night air. I became very skilful at
fishing, and, from days and days of practice, it was seldom indeed that
I lost my fish if once I struck.
Time, too, I had for honey-hunting, but I was never sure that it was
worth the trouble and pain. In nine cases out of ten the honey was too
deeply buried in a tree for me to be able to reach it, and in trying I
was certain to get well stung for my pains. Once in a while, however,
I came across a comb that was easy to reach, and the chance of one of
those occasional finds made me spend, not hours only, but whole days at
a time, looking for the bees' nests.
Along by the streams were many blueberry-patches, though none so large
as that which had cost Kahwa her life; but during the season I could
always find berries enough. And so, fishing and bee-hunting, eating
berries and digging for roots, I wandered on all through the summer. I
had no one place that I could think of as a home more than any other.
I preferred not to stay near my father and mother, and so let myself
wander, heading for the most part westward, and further into the
mountains as the summer grew, and then in the autumn turning south
again. I must have wandered over many hundred miles of mountain, but
when the returning chill in the air told me that winter was not very
far away, I worked round so as to get back into somewhat the same
neighbourhood as I had been in last winter, not more, perhaps, than ten
miles away.
On the whole, it was an uneventful year. Two or three times I met a
grizzly, and always got out of the way as fast as I could. Once only I
found myself in the neighbourhood of man, and I gave him a wide berth.
Many times, of course--in fact, nearly every day--I met other bears
like myself, and sometimes I made friends with them, and stayed in
their company for the better part of a day, perhaps at a berry-patch
or in the wide shallows of a stream. But there was no place for me--a
strong, growing he-bear, getting on for two years old--in any of the
families that I came across. Parents with young cubs did not want me.
Young bears in their second year were usually in couples. The solitary
bears that I met were generally he-bears older than I, and, though we
were friendly on meeting, neither cared for the other's companionship.
Again and again in these meetings I was struck by the fact that I was
unusually big and strong for my age, the result, I suppose, as I have
already said, of the accident that threw me on my own resources so
young. I never met young bears of my own age that did not seem like
cubs to me. Many times I came across bears who were one and even two
years older than myself, but who had certainly no advantage of me in
height, and, I think, none in weight. But I had no occasion to test
my strength in earnest that summer, and when winter came, and the
mountain-peaks in the neighbourhood showed white again against the dull
gray sky, I was still a solitary animal, and acutely conscious of my
loneliness.
That year I made my den in a cave which I found high up on a
mountain-side, and which had evidently been used by bears at some
time or other, though not for the last year or two. There I made my
nest with less trouble than the year before, and at the first serious
snowfall I shut myself up for another long sleep.