Wondrous Sightings No. 4 -- The Bear

The first time we saw the bear was but several months after we moved into a new home in a remote, backcountry section of the north Georgia mountains. I was dozing on a couch and heard footsteps on the porch. Funny, I thought, I had not heard a vehicle approach. It was the bear, as surprised to see me as I was, and quick to decamp up the hill behind the house when he heard me yelling about his apparition. Bears, I think, are among the fastest big animals I've ever seen. The second time, several years later, the bear was more at home somehow. I spied him in the mirror while I was shaving one morning. He was pawing through some empty flower pots. I tried to shoo him away with loud calls, but he was in no hurry. He went up the hill to the shed and sniffed around the lawn mower. Then, he rose up, put his front legs on the hood of the truck and looked at himself in the windshield. Then, only then, did he amble ever-so-slowly down the hill and away. That last bear owned our home place for a few minutes. They are very powerful animals, I believe, and possessed of immense spirit.