Friday Story for June 24, 2022

Written and recorded by Gretchen Anthony
Sound editing by Connor Anthony

Hey readers,

It’s Gretchen, back with another Friday Story for June 24th, 2022. This week, we’re talking about bears.

Recently, my husband Chad was working remotely from our cabin while also refinishing the deck in the evenings. He texted me a photo of our new neighbor… a black bear.

Chad met our new neighbor. He says they’re shy.

The bear had been rustling around behind our garage, but upon being spotted, it ran across our yard and off to the cabins beyond. My guess is the neighbors down the road are either Bear’s old friends, or our neighbors were about to get a wild surprise.

Our cabin is in lake country in Northern Minnesota, where bears are a (mostly) welcome part of life. Reportedly, on our lake, there’s also a mama bear with two cubs. Thankfully everyone in our family knows better than to get between them (I hope).

I enjoy the fact we have a neighborhood bear. But here’s my question: How come, having grown up spending my summers in the woods as I did, haven’t I ever seen one? Every bear I remember seeing was in the zoo.

The cabin my parents owned when I was a girl was even farther north than mine now, and deep in the woods. So, if I asked my mom—and I know she’s listening to this—why I never saw a bear there, she’d say, “You’ve seen lots of them!” There was the bear that got into the screen porch one night. There was the bear that met my dad in the middle of the road. “You were riding on daddy’s shoulders,” she’d remind me. “He said, ‘Shoo, bear,’ with that deep voice of his, and it ran away.’”

I remember these stories, but I don’t remember the bears.

I remember being told about the trips to watch the bears scavenge at the local dump. They say it was more popular than the drive-in movie theater.

I remember being told by the neighbor at my parents’ cabin about meeting a bear in the blueberry patch. She’d picked an entire bucket, and he wanted them. You can guess who cried “Uncle!” first.

I remember being told by the neighbor on the other side about having to shoot a bear cub that got stuck in the window trying to break in. The cub had gotten into their cabin before and ransacked the pantry, and now that he had a taste for what was inside, he would forever want more. On the advice of the forestry service, they put him down. The neighbor felt so bad about doing it that he got teary repeating the story.

So, you see I’ve been around bears a’plenty. I just don’t remember ever seeing one.

Now, there’s no tidy end to this story, but it has me thinking… does my having never seen a bear say more about me, or them?

You can leave your thoughts in the comments!