(Thinking of bears and how they're - mostly - out of sight for the year, and walking Blue in the hills and seeing other wildlife, I've decided that if you really want to be fully aware of your surroundings when out on a walk or in the mountains, get a dog. They hear, see and smell so much more than we, and if you watch your dog, you'll see where a bear has scratched away at a log or in the dirt for glacier lilies, where a fox crossed, when someone else is coming down the trail, and on and on. It's nothing new, but as a dog owner like me who is still learning these things, it's a minor revelation.

One night late this month, stomping through the snow up in a small gulch I usually walk through, a bird swooped down out of the mercury pink sky and flew close to Blue. As I watched, it flew quickly up and down the sides of the gulch, close to the ground, like a skateboarder working the rim of a bowl and looping down to the bottom for another run. When it flirted quickly over my head, I saw a white head and a chunky body: an owl. Hunting for mice, I guessed, maybe hoping Blue and I, walking along, might scare some up and make them move just enough to reveal themselves for some fast food on a winter’s evening.)

For better or for worse, hibernation gives humans a reasonably easy chance to find and hunt bears. There's an interesting book - a Ph.D. thesis, really - that's difficult to find, but if you can locate "Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere", it's worth a look, though it can sound dated, because it was written in 1924 and references even earlier works, before the 20th century enlightenment period in anthropology and other social sciences that portrayed other cutures better than simply reasearch "subjects." Irving Hallowell covers hibernation stories, bear hunting practices and post-mortem ceremonies.

Different peoples piled logs and rocks in front of a bear's den, and then punched through the top with a lance, or shot downward with a rifle. Or, a fire was built and the heat forced the bear out the entrance, where the hunters waited with weapons. Dogs were trained to go into a den and rouse a bear and force it out, when the bear, sluggish with hibernation didn't have the speed and clear mind to fight back. Especially brave individuals (I guess) went into dens and (somehow) got a rope around the neck of a bear and, with help dragged it out.

Most of the time, Hallowell relates, these hunts were in conjunction with requests and conciliatory speeches to the bear. These ranged from a shaman mentioning in a loud speech that the bears' sister ordered the bear to give itself up, and for i to come out of the den without delay. Or, there was the singing of "love songs" to bring the bear out of its den, the words of which seem to be lost to history.

Bear hunters apologized to their prey, saying they were hungry and needed the pelt to keep warm, and begged the bear not to be offended and not to leave evil thoughts to follow the hunters, like this:

(Ignore the King James Bible stylizing). But an "evil minded" bear might fight back, it was said. There's no indication why a bear might be evil, other than alluding to the fact that some people are like that, and bears and people are so much alike.

Of many interesting things, Hallowell relates the old, widespread belief about the reason why bears' paws were soft, pink and sensitive when they emerged from their dens in the spring: it was once though that bears sucked their paws for nourishment all winter. How else could bears live on nothing all winter, and emerge healthy, people thought? With cubs even? Some stories relate lost hunters and children tho are given refuge in bears' dens, and stay alive by sucking the milky juice from the bears' paws. The stories are from regions all around the northern hemisphere, from the arctic south to the midwest, where bears have lived for eons. Did this belief arise from human traits: babies sucking thumbs? Fetal sleep postures? Bears cleaning their paws, like other animals?

Loggers from the Northeast must have learned the following saying from the Penobscot Indians, who had the saying long before colonial times. Woodsmen once wished (and may still) this upon someone who wasted the whole summer not working and saving money: "Let him suck his paws all winter."

Thinking of the Northeast and of pithy writers and their sayings, I stumbled on the Blog of Henry David Thoreau the other day. Greg Perry the blogger types up some excerpts for each date from the journals of Thoreau and posts them each day. (Thoreau wrote close to two-million words in his journal, which he kept for 24 years). It's been published in its entirety; you can find the 15 volumes in any large library.

I've taught "Walden; Or, Life in the Woods" to Freshman Composition classes, and the book still interests students. Thoreau is smart, cranky, fascinating and funny: the kind of personality is attractive to young readers and writers. Students are looking for a writer to grab onto, someone to emulate and aspire to, and a strong voice is a good teaching tool, especially when you can show them that he's also ironic (This is, after all, the age of "Seinfeld") and tries, at times to pull the wool over their eyes. Although I've read Thoreau from my high school days, I got the idea to teach him from Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Pirsig's character carries a copy of "Walden" with him on the motorbike trip, and he writes that it's a great book to open up at any page, start reading, and you have something to talk about with others - especially meaning the character of his son, Chris, but really everyone. (Not that great of a paraphrase on my part, as I can't find the exact page for those lines.) So the Thoreau Blog is like the hard copy of the book, keyed to the days, and I've been checking it out, and each day raises some thoughts.

One day I searched for references to bears. From some interesting journal entries, there is this, from May 13, 1852:

Where are the men who dwell in thought? Talk, - that is palaver! at which men hurrah and clap! The manners of the bear are so far good that he does not pay you any compliments.

So the bear is an animal who dwells in thought himself, is wise enough to keep his mouth shut, withhold judgement of those around who might talk too much. He's smart enough to live all winter without eating, keep to him (or her) self, and rarely seek out humans. A bears' manners are so good (some of Thoreau's famous irony here) that they don't compliment us on our doings in the world - our clothes, our cities, our weapons of mass destruction - even when it impacts their lives. Hmm...

Case in point: in these modern times, it's said there's a new blog created every second on the internet. Where are the men who think rather than talk (and blog)? Who value discourse over applause, substance over shock and awe? (I admit: I'm guilty.)

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The Blackfeet story "How the Bear Stole the Chinook" is popular and one of many bear stories among the nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy, and it's been retold in several different versions in books and songs.

The Chinook winds are the warm west winds that blow hard during the winter and can melt the snow in a matter of hours. The word is supposed to mean "snow eater," but that's under dispute. The greatest Chinook change in a 24-hour period was recorded on January 15, 1972, when the temperature went from −54°F to 49°F in 24 hours at Loma, Montana. (Maybe more than you want to know is in the Wikipedia entry.)

As you sometimes hear on the Front, it's chinooking real hard. I've been on the Front when a chinook has blown in, and it's like running into a wall of warm air. It seems like the snow turns directly to vapor without stopping to be water for a moment. I've also seen it swing hard the other way, the temperature going from 70's one evening to a blizzard the next morning, horizontal snow plastering everything and shutting down the roads. But that's not called anything special: it's just called winter.

"How the Bear Stole the Chinook" from Frances Fraser's popular children's book begins like this:

"In this long-ago year, the snow came early, and lay deep, the wind blew from the north, cold and bitter, and the Chinook did not come. The Indians shivered in their lodges, for the snow made it hard to get wood for the fires. After a while, their food was gone. The children cried with hunger, and the hunters could find no game at all - everything had been driven away by the blizzards.

"Every morning, and every night, the Old Ones went out to look for the great, clear, blue arch that tells of the coming of the Chinook. But the grey clouds lay flat on the mountains and the Chinook did not come..

A little boy, poor and hungry, gathers his friends the animals and they talk. The coyote, the magpie, the owl and the weasel came to his lodge and they talked. The magpie was a gossip, and hears everything that happens in the animal world, so they all asked him: what happened to the Chinook?.

"For myself," said Ma-mi'as-sik-ami, "I do not know. But I have many relatives, and many of them live in the mountains. Some of them will know. I shall go ask them." And he flew away.

Turns out, a bear has caught the Chinook and is keeping it all to himself in his den to keep him warm all winter. All the friends talk, and they decide what they must do: go to the mountains and set the Chinook free.

To find out what happens, and to find out why the prairie chicken has spots, use this link to find the closest library that has Frances Fraser's children's book "The Bear Who Stole the Chinook and other stories" through Worldcat.

Or, if you can't wait, read Curly Bear Wagner's "grown up" version. It's a longer version of story (transcript and MP3), and it's on the Turtle Island Storytellers site, from Wisdom of the Elders Radio Series.

It begins this way:

"This is the story about the bear that stole the Chinook, the Chinook winds. In my country, the winds blow very hard up in the Rocky Mountains by Glacier National Park and onto the Blackfeet Nation. It may be 20, 30 below zero and we look up and see the kind of the blue arch in the mountains and that a meaning that the Chinook winds will come and warm everything up. And so this story goes back, way back in time, maybe a thousand years.

And, you can read the lyrics to Jack Gladstone's song called "The Bear Who Stole the Chinook" at his web site.

The snow came early and lay on deep
The cold blown bitter made the women weep
Our men tracked hard but could find no game
In our children’s bellies were cryin’ pains

Jack Gladstone is a singer, songwriter, teacher and storyteller living in Browning. Check his music on Amazon.com or CDBaby.

There are many more bear stories from Blackfeet life; in the next year I'll cover more.

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November: Hibernation ≈ December ≈ January: climate change

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If you like what you have read, consider a tax-deductible contribution to me for a box of micro-cassettes for my tape recorder and a stack of reporters notebooks to scribble in.

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