Ursology

Ursology, or the study of bears, is endlessly fascinating, even for ill-informed amateurs like me. I grew up in bear-country (although, in the Northern Hemisphere, what isn't bear country?!)--in the High Sierra of California. The first piece of writing I ever submitted for publication was a nonfiction account, handwritten and illustrated with a sketch, of a brief non-lethal bear-hunt to which I was invited by my father. Someone had spotted two relatively mature cubs (and their mother?) near our home, and if I recall correctly, my father took the opportunity to let his three or four hunting-dogs practice. The "cubs" probably already weighed well over 100 pounds at that stage. The bear on that tree was certainly a large animal, even as I take into account my having been a child, to whom much seems immense.


If I have the particular canine-era correct, the dogs were probably Jack, Shorty, and Jocko, although Jocko might have been replaced by Striker (this is sounding like a history of the Three Stooges). Of course, to someone 8 or 9--I don't have the exact year--the event seemed utterly chaotic but at the same time not unusual. A child thinks, "This is what my family does; therefore, this is not unusual."

Less than a mile from our home, up on a steep, rocky timbered hillside, the dogs "treed" the bears--lovely how a noun becomes a verb in this instance. Far above us loomed the dark grey diorite peak called the Sierra Buttes, 8,000 feet. They were Black bears--the name of the species common to the Sierra and to many regions of North America. It's a confusing name because Black bears are usually some shade of brown, often a dark brown. Sometimes the color is lighter, however, and one of the cubs in this instance was reddish brown--a "cinnamon" bear, my father called it. In my visual memory hangs the image of the cinnamon bear clinging to a pine tree, not far off the ground, but well out of the hounds' reach. I also see the dogs; they were completely transformed into hysterical, sloberring, leaping, howling beasts. They were trained dogs, however, so when they were called off, they reluctantly but professionally came away from the tree. I don't exactly remember the anticlimactic ending, but essentially we went home, and the bears ran off. I presume, too, that my father had a rifle (at least) and a pistol. He was not a foolish man, even if running the dogs after a young bear is arguably a foolish, even cruel, hobby; my father was of another era, his consciousness attuned substantially to a nineteenth-century way of life. He knew that a mama bear might well attack and that bears are almost incredibly quick and fast--among the very best athletes on the planet. Indeed, I don't remember hearing about or seeing the mama bear, so he may have just been treeing, brifely, the adolescent cubs.

I doubt whether the young bears enjoyed the event, but they were unharmed, and (I am straining here) perhaps the exercise did them good, and at least they learned more about how humans and dogs will misbehave, must be avoided.


At any rate, at my father's suggestion, I wrote up the account, sitting at the chrome-dinette table, with that meserizing pattern in the yellow top. I included the sketch, and sent off the manuscript to Full Cry, "America's Leading Tree-Hound Magazine." Full Cry. What a great name for a magazine, which still exists. Breeds of so-called "tree hounds" include Plot Hounds, Redbones, and Blue-ticks, all fairly sleek, quick, muscled dogs with great noses and big voices. Often such dogs do double-duty as hunters of raccoon and bear, as was the case with my father's dogs. Such hounds are, however, trained not to hunt ubiquitous deer, which they can run down and kill, as opposed to "treeing" and not killing, and indeed in many states, it is illegal to hunt deer using dogs.

I recall my father being able to distinguish one hound's "voice" from another's when the dogs, far away, had treed the object of the hunt. Believe it or not, it is this choral-music of the hounds for which owners of such hounds live. My father also distinguished between dogs that excelled at finding "the track" and dogs that excelled at staying on the track--literally for miles, and sometimes to the extent that the dogs would disappear, only to wander back days later, or indeed to be picked up by good Samaritans and returned, owing to the name and phone number on the brass plate attached to the collar.

Some hounds were good at picking up a "hot" or fresh scent, just left by the animal. Others were good at picking up a cold scent, left by an animal passing through some time ago; hence the term "cold nose": the arcane terminology of a sub-culture. . . .

Of course, throughout my childhood I was friendly with the dogs and they with me, but nonetheless they were professionals, not pets. I was a small human, and I amused them. But they lived for the hunt. The rest of life was tedious if not unpleasant. . . . At any rate, my manuscript was, of course, rejected, but the process of writing and submitting fascinated me, almost as much as the quick, impromptu, bizarre hunt. . . . Of course, Faulkner's novella The Bear has special resonance for me. . . . Bears figure into all manner of folklore around the world, as we know. . . Technically, polar bears don't hibernate, I have learned, although they do go into repose, "bear" cubs in late Fall, and get active in Spring. . . . My brother figuratively stumbled upon a "bear tree" once--a massive hollow log in which a bear had hibernated, deciding not to use the classic cave. What he remembered above all else was the overwhelming, unapologetic, ursine, gamey stench that came from the hollow. . . . I conclude, then, with a poem about bears, waking:


Bears Waking



All over one hemisphere,
bears stir in hot stench
of imperial naps. They
don’t know from latitude
or axis, orbit or equinox.
They feel knowledge in blood
and brain, gland and tongue and paw.
They wake to thirst
that nearly blinds them.
Hunger tears
into guts like a wolverine. Their
noses lead them out to sunshine
or warm rain. Their noses devour air
for food-news. Waking
bears don’t think about
next winter or this summer.
They lope into hollows
of odor, groves of sound,
putting their bodies on rocks
and brush. Sunlight is;
and it is just fine with waking bears.


First published in The Acorn #41 [El Dorado Writers’ Guild], 2004