Black Bear

       Saw my first bear of the year while riding my bike, and although they are common around here, mostly they avoid humans and thus see, hear or smell us long before we see them. This individual had crossed the road about fifty yards in front of me and disappeared down a bank into a wooded ravine. I was climbing slowly up a hill at the time and figured that it had continued on into the woods, but as I approached the spot where it had gone over the edge, it suddenly popped its head up as if it wanted to return back across the road at the same spot, so was no more than 15 feet to my side. I yelled "Hey!" as if it were a dog, which caused it to turn and run back into the ravine, stopping to look at me some 40 or 50 yards further on. No doubt I had startled it more than it had startled me, and fortunately black bears are very rarely aggressive, so as I talked calmly to it it eventually continued leisurely into the woods.

      One aspect of bears and other living creatures that always impresses me is the vividness of their color-and I consider black a true color when it is part of a wild animal.  It is unlike any other black, being instead a "living" vibrant hue that cannot be duplicated by paint or photograph, and shimmers like an aspen tree in the light. It makes such a contrast with the landscape around it that it appears to be almost separate from, like a crude simulation, yet the animal itself moves fluidly through the woods like a bird through the wind.