Spring
It was rain that awakened Bear on this day. He did not awaken at once, but slowly through the pre-dawn hours. Through long winter nights, except when the winds might howl, the world outside his lair was deathly still. Now, as winter stubbornly ground to it's end, more gentle sounds began to intrude upon this sanctum. It began with the faint patter of distant raindrops. Bear dozed on. Then the volume of rain began to increase, making a steady hissing sound as steam rose from the remaining mounds of snow outside the den. There were places in the lip of ground above the entrance that water began to pool, then drip in a steady rhythm upon the ground below. Tap. Tap. Each drop seemed to sound louder than the one before it. Finally, Bear began to stir. Now there was a steady trickle of water into his den. It was time for the world to arise.
Bear had been up and about with greater frequency for a few weeks. The boughs of the cedars had shed their coats of white and the glaze of ice upon the limbs of larger trees had melted away. In the shadowy realm of the Great Forest the snows had sunk yet still covered most of the forest floor. Here and there, in the sparse pathways, snow gave way to mud and a peek of pale green. Bear had heard the great chorus of ducks and geese returning, their calls grew more frequent with each day. All of the smaller birds, the sparrows, finches and redbirds, had come back to life in full song. The deadening blanket of Winter had finally lifted, though the Spring, like Bear, was still sluggish and slow moving.
When Bear finally poked his massive head outside his front door that morning, there were no sounds but the steady hissing of the rain falling. All about the crusty shell of the remaining snows sizzled and steamed with each drop. A dense fog hung above the still semi-frozen ground, glowing dull white in the grey light of pre-dawn. Bear's previous experience of Spring told him that this was the rain that would break the river free of ice. So it was that on this day, Bear would travel in the rain to the river, not a mile distant, and scout it's banks for the first break in the ice.
For three days it rained, each day growing a bit warmer than the day before. For three days Bear repeated his trek to the river, roaming up and down it's banks. With each day more and more snow cover melted away, yielding to mud and the soft, spongy ground of water-logged, dead vegetation beneath. The vales and ridges of the Great Forest were shrouded in the rising mists each day, until the mid-morning hours when these fog banks would lift like the white of Winter being peeled away from the earth.
By afternoon of the third day Bear found himself way up the river, some four miles from his den. It was a spot below a rocky crag, where the river parted above into a set of twin falls. With a drop of no more than thirty or forty feet, the river fell into a deep pool beneath the falls, then turned away into a great, looping bend to the south. It was a place that Bear knew well, having taken many fish there in years past. Great dams of ice had amassed at the lip of the crag, but the waters had begun to trickle through beneath. The stalagmite form of the frozen falls had melted into the pool below, allowing the waters to fall free and splash loudly onto the remaining ice. The sound echoed from this little bowl carved out of the earth, a smacking and splashing noise at once.
Bear edged closer to the riverbank. He saw that there was a growing pool atop the ice below the falls. In the middle there was a hole through the ice, maybe six feet across. He saw that there were other fissures in the surface of the ice. There was now the soft gurgle of waters rushing underneath. He could sense that it would not be much longer before these waters would run clear. There would be clear waters, full of fish.
While sniffing around this spot, having fond memories of juicy trout, Bear was abruptly startled by a loud, sharp crack from above. He instinctively backed away, looking up toward the source of the sound. The scene was frozen for a moment, until waters began gushing in greater force from beneath the precarious ice dams. There was some great static charge in the air, making the hairs on Bear's neck stand up. Something was wrong.
Bear was just ready to flee, when at once there came another crack and a long groan from the ice dam. The groan grew louder as the great mass of ice nudged forward, freeing a torrent of water to spill below it. Captivated by the gushing falls, Bear warily remained there at some distance from the riverbank. The rate of water continued to increase, and a roar was beginning to build behind the ice. The great mass teetering on the ledge shuddered, groaning louder against the rock, until it all exploded over the side and plunged into the waiting pool below. The huge sheets of ice crushed right through the remaining surface ice of the hollow. It gave a thunderous crash as the ice broke further apart on impact, and a huge wave of water rushed out and over the riverbank. Bear reflexively backed away further, though he still watched the river.
As soon as the crash had ended, the noise was immediately replaced by the roar of water from the falls. When the last crashing wave had receded back to the river, Bear could see that it had deposited a plump trout upon the matted reeds not ten feet from where he stood. The trout lay there, still stunned for a moment, then began to flap and wriggle about. The moment that trout moved Bear's instincts were triggered. He lunged and landed right atop the doomed fish, snatching it into his mighty jaws and devouring it in two bites. The attack was ferocious. Savage. And it was beautiful.
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The rains finally ended. The roar of the river continued for another week at least, until it's waters settled into a normal depth and current. The remaining snows and ice were gone, save for those deeply shaded spots of the Great Forest. It was now two weeks after the great ice break on the river. Violets and bluebells began to sprout; the grasses grew green again; midges, flies, ants and bees, all manner of crawling or buzzing thing had come to life. The days had grown warm, dry and steadily longer.
Bear was eating well. He had taken a young doe, a yearling not yet a mother. The wet forest floor gave dead timber in abundance, almost always a buffet of the reliable springtime staple of grubs. And now that the river had returned to normal, there would be fish. When in season, there had always been an abundance of fish. Save for the occasional eagle or osprey, Bear had no competition on the river. Nothing on land could challenge him, so Bear had enjoyed a free reign along it's banks. Bear didn't know it yet, but this condition was about to change.
After the recent event at the falls, it seemed that Nature had ordained that the waters below would be Bear's preferred spot for the season. On a day near the midpoint of Spring, Bear wandered lazily in that direction, with the rising sun at his back. Away from the Great Forest, a band of heath stretched until the river. It was full of life now. The tall grasses were coming back; the flowering varieties of trees were in their full flush; ever more bees, and even dragonflies, filled the air amid the calls of blackbirds and larks. This was Spring as Bear had ever known it.
On this particular day Bear reached the eastern bank of the river just as the sun reached full above the treetops. He turned north to head for the falls, with happy visions of clear waters teeming with fish. There were indeed fish awaiting him there, but he was to find something else first. Bear reached a point along his path when he was just less than one hundred yards below the falls. A light, morning breeze from the west came across, carrying that sour-salty smell of the strange stag skins he'd encountered in late Winter. The hairs upon his great neck stood on end, fluffing up an impressive ruff around his head. He sniffed harder at the air and snorted. He did not like this smell!
Somewhere within Bear's very simple brain chemistry an alarm was set off. He grew filled with a panic that these smelly stag imposters were at his fishing hole. Bear did not, nor could he understand the reason for this sensation. He could only react as he knew how. The silent hand of Nature dictated that the pool was now Bear's to defend. A bear, a badger, even the simple mole, all these creatures hold an instinctive understanding of the roles that Nature has assigned to them. There are rules to be followed. Unwritten, unspoken, yet no less understood. Nature provides all yet gives nothing. Survival is rooted in how much Nature allows one to take. The day that the ice dam smashed into the pool and landed the trout at his feet, Bear became obliged to defend this pool of water.
He stalked forward silently, slowly. He looked ahead through the tops of grasses and reeds, keeping low to the ground in the approach. He began to hear the soft spray of the river spilling across the falls and splashing into the waters below. He was close now, still behind the vegetation along the riverbank. He stopped for a moment, sniffing the air and peering through the gently waving stalks. Occasionally there was the bright glitter of sunlight reflecting from the rippled surface. Not quite beneath the falls yet. Bear waited there, breathing heavily.
A sudden, sharp splash struck the water, followed by a loud cry. To Bear it almost sounded like the barking "yip" of a kit fox, but it was distorted by the echo created in the cavern below the falls. Then another loud splash. Suddenly Bear was angered. They were after his fish! In a near blind rage, he charged forward through the reeds and landed astride the rocky shoreline. With all four feet firmly planted he puffed out his ruff fully, making him appear to be half as large more than he was. With his mighty head and jaws framed within that bristling crown, Bear roared, fangs bared and extending his neck to wave his head back and forth. Bear had not yet seen what beast played in his grotto, but whatever it was it was now warned.
No more than ten yards upstream, in the shallows of the opposite bank, there were three of them. After fully expending his roar, Bear saw them for the first time. Strange creatures. The way they moved was strange. They, as Bear could also, stood upon their hind legs. But more, they walked upon their hind legs. Their forelegs appeared stunted, but they could carry broken limbs, stripped down to long sticks that they somehow grasped. Their hides were bare and dark, hairless but for the shocks of black fur atop their heads. Bear was downwind of them. He could smell fear. They remained frozen there, in the shallows, where the deep pool ended and the river carried on.
Bear decided to end this encounter with minimal effort. He would stand upon his hind legs. And he would walk upon his hind legs, as they did. The moment that he arose to his full height, before wading any further, the three mongrel creatures dropped their sticks, broke and ran for the slopes and cover of the timberline above the falls. All but one. The smallest of the three had stumbled over it's stick in a panic and plunged headlong into the deep water. Bear dropped to all fours again and plodded upstream, watching for this odd creature to reappear, either in the water or climbing out somewhere on the rocks. He came upon the place where the three had been gathered. There was still no sign of the third.
There, in the gravel of the shallows, lay two sticks. There were fish impaled upon the sticks, two upon one and three upon the other. They were already dead, but they were fresh. And plump. Bear sat down there and pressed his forepaws down upon the sticks. He ripped the fish from the sticks and devoured them. It was not savage. It was not beautiful. It was just food on a stick.
