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.
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 comes 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 farther 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 smuggled 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 and
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.
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 recognize 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 woodchuck 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
carcass 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 come 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 farther
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 neighborhood as I had been in last winter, no
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 neighborhood 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 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 mountainpeaks in the neighborhood
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.