Winter
Winter had taken on a tainted scent. It was the first thing Bear noticed after sloughing out of his lair that morning. Temperatures had been brutally cold for a period of weeks, though Bear could not know this. Bear did not know weeks or any other measure of time. Bear knew seasons as they were experienced, just as Bear "knew" anything. A bear's existence is entirely in the moment, blessed with the innate understanding that every event in life falls into one of two categories. There is the successful hunt, with the sating of appetite, or the unsuccessful hunt with it's resulting hunger.
Bear knew instinctively when to hunt, what to eat and what not to eat. Bear hunted without fear, knowing instinctively that he was at the top of the food chain. Bear existed in harmony with his environment, dedicated only to what he might do best: being a bear. When the sub-zero temperatures came, Bear knew instinctively to retire to his den and slow his breathing. Like a whale, drawing a deep breath but four times in an hour, his heart slowed and internal body temp dropped by a full ten degrees. It was only after the outside temperature had risen by forty degrees, and remained there for a full day, that Bear had slowly thawed and awakened.
On that morning, hunger beckoned him to depart the lair and wade into the deep snow. The ground beneath was still frozen hard and the air stung his snout with every plume of steam into the frost. Bear had been out on these mid-winter forays enough times before. He recalled a scent of Winter, and this was not it. Something was off. There was still that sharp clarity of the cold, the crispness that accentuates both sound and scent alike. There was that familiar palette of mineral and wet salt borne upon the north wind, carried from far off lands. He also detected the more immediate, the familiar oils of the cedar trees, the earthier subtlety of birch. There were faint traces of various smaller mammals, from their trails or their deposits of urine and scat. Amidst all these scent memories that matched Bear's experience of Winter, there was now one other which did not. There was the smell of fire in the air.
Fire was hardly alien to Bear; he had indeed smelled fire before, but it was not typical to his experience of Winter. Fire was common in the late Summer and early Autumn. That was peak berry season, a very active time in any bear's life, thus Bear had frequently encountered fire following the violent lightning storms which sometimes also came as a part of the season. The Great Forest was so vast in scale, that every year tens of thousands of acres would be erased by these wildfires, yet hardly make a dent in the available habitat. When these fires occurred within Bear's range of travel, he would simply move to hunt elsewhere. And always, within a few seasons after a fire, life gradually returned to the place, as Bear continued placidly in his own way. Bear knows to fear and avoid fire, while having an innate understanding of fire as a part of nature. Fire was not something, in Bear's experience, that nature delivered with Winter. This was the taint of the air. Fire did not belong to Winter!
Thus alerted, Bear tread forward warily into the sea of white. His nostrils remained flared, his ears pricked up. His breath grew labored, leaving an icy foam to form upon his snout. There was no sight of smoke or flame in the skies. In every direction the Great Forest rested, glistening with frost and ice, still deep in Winter's slumber. Bear would follow his nose to the source, despite the grumbling from his belly. He had ample fat reserves stored yet, should it be necessary to draw upon these. Such were these Winter days.
This day was still young. A pale sun strained through the veil of low cloud, so that earth and sky both radiated a dim glow. The forest was peppered by grey and black stalks reaching skyward into a sea of white. There were the occasional verdant boughs of cedar groves, also weighted by snows, but their deep green shone through the blanket. Here and there redbirds peeped from their perches. A bright scarlet flash would show for an instant in the trees, dancing amid the bare pillars as they would forage. The Great Forest was utter still, but for their minute disturbance. Like Bear, the forest had gone to deep rest; only taking breath at long intervals, waiting in sleep. Earth and sky were frozen together.
A small wind arose from the north, giving Bear a stronger scent of fire. Still distant, but now clearly to the north and east. This was the remains of fire. It had that gritty, ashy coal quality of the forest floor after a wildfire had burned itself out. Bear plodded forward through the snows, following the source of the scent. The path through the columns of trees now took a gentle grade downward. The pitch was gradual, barely perceptible at first. After the distance of some miles, Bear found himself at a convergence of slopes, which dropped further to form a great ravine. The land opposite arose to another formidable ridge, climbing to a height beyond Bear's view.
Bear halted at a distance of two to three hundred yards from the bottom of this cleft in the earth. The winds were channeled down the great ridge ahead, to sail over the bottom of the steep ravine and push up the long slope Bear had descended to arrive there. This delivered the most powerful scent he had found thus far. The source of this fire must lie ahead, somewhere below, deeper into the ravine. Bear sniffed harder at this wind. There was fire and something else strange. Something he had never smelled in Winter. Something he had never smelled at all.
Bear did not yet feel alarmed, simply alerted. Looking ahead he could see no flames, no billowing plumes of smoke cloud. He sensed that he had found the source of this recent fire. This was a fire extinguished and thus, Bear had no reason to fear. To see more up ahead, he rose upon his rear haunches, reaching a full height of seven feet. He sniffed the air again, turning his massive head this way and that, as he tried to sort out that other foreign scent. Something sour. And salty.
The birds of the Great Forest had gone quiet. Redbirds, blackbirds, the sparrows had each fallen silent in their turns. The last were a pair of doves. They had been cooing their mournful song from somewhere high above. Bear heard them for quite some while, until he had stood. Their soft cries ceased abruptly, then silently retiring their perch, they flew off into the haze. Now there was only wind through the trees, whistling as it did.
Bear dropped to all fours again and shuffled forward, edging closer to the rim of that great crevice. The wind funneling down the great slope opposite delivered the most potent scent yet. The smell of old fire was suddenly so strong, it seemed to Bear that he must be standing right atop the ash. The frigid air whistled gently as it rushed by him, but somewhere beneath this sound there were now other sounds. Strange sounds he had never heard; part grunting, part barking.
At ten feet from the lip the earth dropped away. Bear could see over the edge and down into the bottom of the ravine. There at the floor of these slopes there was a hollow, a small bowl insulated from the howling winds. In the center there was a mass of ash and cinders, white, grey and black. Sticks, limbs and charred pieces were scattered about the space. In the center there were still embers, spiraling broken wisps of white smoke upwards. No flames, no widespread catastrophe. This was like no fire Bear had ever witnessed.
Bear continued to survey this scene with an instinctive wonder. The winds gained more force, over the gorge in a howling rush. The tips of frozen limbs clicked together high above, as the trees bent and swayed under the force. Bear was searching that other sour and foreign smell he had caught moments before. It seemed to elude him now, only there in faint traces amid the crystallized mist of snow spray. Still, he strained at the air to find it again.
The wind biting at his nose and eyes, Bear studied the slope up from the hollow below. There were large tracks in the snow, leading away to weave between the tree trunks. His eyes followed this path, up and up further into the trees, until he spotted movement. There, nearly halfway up to the top of the ridge, there were two strange creatures climbing, struggling against the deep snows. It looked like a pair of stags, yet Bear could not smell stag. These beasts did not move like stags. They appeared to travel on all fours, as a stag would, but there was something wrong with their movement. And stags did not leave tracks so large.
This was quite curious. Bear again rose upon his haunches to stand tall against the wind. He watched and sniffed harder until he again detected the sour smell. That smell came from those strange beasts. He could not tell what they were, but he knew these could not be stags. A stag would be worth pursuing to sate his hunger. Such a feast could carry him through weeks, as surely Winter had not ended, but he would not give chase. Some sense told him that their flesh was tainted. Bear's understanding of living things in the forest told him that there were only two types: that which is food and that which is a threat.
Still raised to his formidable height, Bear let loose a ferocious, growling roar. He had drawn deep from his lungs and a great plume of steam erupted from his mighty jaws. The roar echoed throughout the gorge, rising above the howling wind. It proclaimed, "Begone, unclean beasts! Begone from My forest!" For a moment the wind ceased. The great roar reverberated again and again, pounding the dense, cold air like a drum. Bear could feel the earth groan beneath his feet as he returned to all fours.
Up on the steep slope the sour smelling creatures clumsily hastened their ascent. Now clearer than before, Bear again heard the strange grunting barks. This sound also belonged to these intruders. They would escape the clutch of his great maw for this time. He would have to see them closer the next time. He still did not know what they were, but he knew their scent and the sound of their calls. Bear would not forget these.
Unbeknownst to Bear, he had just had his first encounter with man. He did not comprehend that man had worn the hides of stag, having little fur of his own. He was not aware that man could carry fire. Still, Bear had known instinctively that man was a threat. He would now remain ever alert to man's presence.
On this day Bear did not enjoy the glut of a freshly killed stag. He made the long, slow trek back to his den. In the general direction from which he came, he struggled against the slow grade, the wind now at his back. All the exertion redirected him to the original purpose of finding some form of sustenance. Bear wandered amid the trees, sniffing and chuffing through snows that yielded nothing. By the time Bear had returned to within a half mile of his den, half of the day's light had been spent.
Bear came upon a small cluster of evergreens which he had not passed earlier. Their boughs were heavily weighted, the lower ones drooping near to the top of the snows drifted beneath. Some of them even lay atop the drift, as though the trees had erupted from beneath the crust. They appeared completely undisturbed, except for one small trough, one tiny breach in the whiteness that did not belong. Bear froze in his tracks, eyes fixed upon this singular point, waiting patiently.
It had passed to those hours of a mid-Winter, late afternoon, when a weak sun might have a brief reach beneath the heavy cloud bank on it's way to dusk. In one of those moments, shafts of unfiltered sunlight fell upon that hole in the snow and lingered there for several minutes. Bear remained still, watching. Something stirred behind the skirt of white, releasing a fine mist of icy crystal into the air above the hole. The shaft of light captured this spray as it drifted towards the ground.
A white hare tentatively poked it's head through the opening, it's whiskers waving in the light. The ray of sun shone directly into the hare's face. Whiskers dancing, eyes blinking, with it's long ears still laid back on it's neck, the hare crept forward. It was halfway out into the open before it even knew that Bear was there. Bear lunged and waved a mighty paw downward to crush the hare into the frozen earth, immediately plunging his snout behind to take the hare firmly in his jaws.
The hare was ripped into pieces in mere seconds, a spray of crimson blood bright upon the white-carpeted forest floor. His fearsome fangs bared, Bear chomped at his prey until nothing remained but a few puffs of fur floating about. And blood, brilliant red splashed upon this world of black and white. It was savage. And it was beautiful.
No comments:
Post a Comment