Helder, grinning, indicates a large Spruce tree to our right. Claire and I met a large black bear right there in early Spring.

Helder was walking 50 feet or so behind Claire. Since he had stopped for a photo, as she approached the right side of that tree, the bear appeared on the left side. Helder had a clear view of both.

• • •

“When you come face to face with a bear, there is always a moment of uncertainty. Has the encounter scared or angered the bear? It is best to be prepared for either eventuality.

Ed, a good friend of Helder’s, was a professional hunting guide. While guiding a small party of bow hunters for Elk in the San Juans, Ed was attacked by what turned out to be the last Grizzly in Colorado. In the bears’ defense, she was old and riddled with arthritis. The headline in the news was, “Man wrestles Grizzly Bear to death.” Reading that, Helder thought, “Ed is the only man I know who could do that.” And sure, nuff. It took 21 surgeries to get him to where he could walk with difficulty using a cane.

Bears are pragmatists, and more often than not, in his experience, a bear will not wait around to assess their chances. Running away is by far the most practical of options. That would undoubtedly be my defense of choice, but no one can outrun a bear on the level.

This bear was face to face with Helder—head lowered, eyes focused in that pidgin-toed stance as bears do—but didn’t have a clue that Claire was just a few feet away. Helder said to Claire—in a voice just loud enough to be heard, but in a tone that was doin’ its best to disguise the anxiety he was feeling—” Bear.” To which she replied—over her left shoulder, “WHAT?”

That “WHAT?” resolved in that bears mind any question about this encounter with Helder. He was clearly outnumbered, and Helder had the element of surprise! Bear stood on its hind legs—pirouetted as fine as any ballet ever offered (that is complete hearsay. I never saw a ballet) 180 degrees—and when his front feet hit the ground, he was in high gear. Helder managed a few quick pics, but by then, he was a quarter mile away.“

• • •

Back as a Bear

Shortly after Claire’s older brother Stephen died rather suddenly, she and I set up camp in a remote spot on a hill overlooking the West, a really tasty little willow-lined trout stream gurgling merrily between beaver dams high in the Colorado Rockies. Our hope was complete relaxation, punctuated by daytime hikes in the surrounding forests, fly fishing the beaver dams morning and evening, with morning coffee and evening bottle of wine sitting on the sidehill watching the sunset over the Beckwith mountains and grassy meadows the other side of the stream.

We had been in the woods for a couple of days. We had enjoyed the company of a younger Mule Deer who had attached herself to us the day we arrived and had become our constant companion mornings and evenings when we were in camp. The Mulies are nocturnal and sleep during the day.

Claire and her brother Steve enjoyed a closer relationship in their adult years than when they were younger. Stephen had been a troublemaker as a young man who suffered the ideological angst familiar to the Vietnam-era youth. More mature, he loved to cook, and he was a man enjoyed by all who knew him. At least, I never knew anyone with a critical word to say about him except his spouse, who seemed to tire of his extraordinarily gregarious and generous nature. I observed that as Stephen got older, he learned to give and receive Love and so matured. He became much more interested in engaging with Claire in existential realities; all of the why questions, like, “If God is good, then why…?” Stephen became very curious, but there was never any inclination toward religion, near as I could tell.

Before he became ill, they discussed their preferences at the end of their lives. Both agreed that they were not interested in prolonging life by artificial means. They wanted to die ‘natural’ deaths. The conversation was enhanced naturally by Claire’s extensive experience with the dying through her work in Hospice. At some point in the discussion, Stephen quipped, “I would love to come back as a bear, but with my luck, I will probably come back as a groundhog!” He also was possessed of a great sense of humor.

The sun was rising on a beautiful, cold, clear morning. We got up with the sun and placed our camp chairs so that we were tucked into the scrubby oaks, facing West, just below the crown of the hill where our camp was positioned. With a high peak behind us, the sun would eventually warm our backs.

We were in the perfect position to watch the sunrise patiently descend the slopes of the high peak in front of us, slowly feel its way through the dark forest, and finally set fire to the golden, grassy meadow immediately across the creek from us. I had just finished preparing black tea for Claire and black coffee for me in enameled metal cups. I was going to join her for our morning meditations when Claire discretely said, “BEAR.”

Handing Claire her tea, I sat beside her, pulling my lap blanket over my knees.

She was re-entering the meadow from behind a smallish stand of fir trees. She seemed to be doing nothing much more than enjoying the softness of the pre-dawn light and the waking smells of early Spring among the high peaks. She was not hurrying to get anywhere. She walked South across the meadow, pawing at one thing and sniffing another, perhaps hoping for a chipmunk for breakfast. Then she realized that we were sharing her moment. She paused and turned to face us, and sat down.

It is not immediately clear how she discerned our presence. The morning breeze was in our faces, so she couldn’t smell us or my coffee. We hadn’t moved or made a sound since I joined Claire, but the bear knew. She knew.

There is a way of knowing that human-kind essentially denies in favor of a misguided and untrue, anthropomorphic view of the realities of the cosmos that drives a wedge of division deep into the heart of the intimacy that the created order, including humans, should share with one another. The truth is that human is only one kind that shares with all of the other created kinds in this vast cosmos an intimate connection to one another by virtue of the Creator Spirit, who hosts all kinds in herself. The apostle referred to this reality as “in Christ”.

While a human being choosing to live in an intimate relationship with the Creator and the created order that we were created for is of immense value to Her, the notion that humans are exceptional and therefore indispensable to the created order is not only not true but demeans all of the ‘other’ work of Her hands.

Humans are here as a tribute to the Grace extended to us by Her creation. The Cosmos, the created order, will do just fine when human-kind has extincted itself.

The Bear knew we were sharing her morning through our shared deep connection in the Spirit. It is that same connection that could, had the circumstance warranted, have also warned her to run away.

There she sits. Quietly waiting, the eyes of the three locked on to the ‘other’ across a respectable distance. Claire begins to cry as the Spirit begins the holy work of grief for the loss of her beloved brother. “It’s him,” she says, “It’s Stephen!! Remember, he wanted to come back as a bear. He did it!” and then, “He’s OK!”

The bear then loses interest in us as it should and makes an ambling exit across the wildflower meadow, sniffing and pawing at the ground as before, in no hurry, back to the deep woods further on.

Claire, of course, didn’t believe that Stephen had actually become a bear. But we had many experiences of Spirit communicating to us through Her good creation. She graciously communicated that Stephen was okay.