“Gently, gently into the trees,” murmurs a small voice on the window sill. “Morning light tickles all of the leaves.” Bear is singing to the dawn as I wake from a dream of a trail in the Grand Canyon, an old friend smiling by a wooden post with mileage on it, my feeling sense of one decade pleasantly knitting to the next. Then I think, the day must be delivering a package of color this morning. Bear only sings when sunrise is scenic. But what is the tune? Old Cat Stevens? Van Morrison? Or original Bear. His quivery voice continues, “First cup of tea is warm like this, this creep of color, this delicate, um, hmm …”
“Awkward syllables in delicate,” I say.
“Oh. Um …” He pauses, then backs up. “This whispering bliss!”
With my head still on the pillow, he doesn’t see me rolling my eyes. Bliss. Good grief. Another sunrise serving bliss. Unlike me, Bear is not shy to sing sweeping generalizations if he likes the feel of the vowel sounds in his mouth. Dove. Love. Heaven above, are words that have flowed from his thin lips before. But first thing in the morning? Good grief. All the years I’ve been the companion of this handful of stuffed bear I have tried to persuade him singing would not please me as much as a cup of lapsang souchong on a tray with a fat dollop of warm milk please, three sugar cubes. But no, the kitchen is too far for those short legs. I make a cup for myself and resettle against pillows.
“What’s Henry say today?” Bear asks. We’ve been preparing our brains for winter brooding by returning to the long sentences of A Year in Thoreau’s Journal: 1851. “Read the part about the apples again,” murmurs Bear, content. Ever since I took him to see Walden Pond, Bear especially savors Thoreau syllables.
“Oct. 31st,” I read aloud. “It is rare that that the summer lets an apple go without streaking or spotting it on some part of its sphere … The saunterer’s apple not even the saunterer can eat in the house. Some red stains it will have commemorating the mornings & evenings it has witnessed—some dark & rusty blotches in memory of the clouds, & foggy mildewy days that have passed over it—and a spacious field of green reflecting the general face of nature …”
“Bear, do you think people who live in Flagstaff are stained by the colors of what they witness? Aspen yellow highlighting their hair? The blue grey of Kendrick Mountain tinting the sparkle in their eyes?”
“And Phoenix people have billboards caught in their complexions!”
“If you live at the Grand Canyon your hair darkens to Vishnu Schist.”
“Or you have a Redwall tan.”
Years ago Bear picked me out of a stream of travelers hypnotized by gate numbers in Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor. I spotted the cut of his pilot jacket, the trim of his goggles, but didn’t say hello right away as there was a fellow pushing a clipboard at me. I kept stealing glances while it was explained to me a mere application for a credit card could bring me loads of benefits. I kind of liked the look of the credit card with an America West 727 taking off of its plastic surface. But the offer of a take-along stuffed bear with an attitude sold me. Bear went with me to New York City that day and ever since has remained my steadfast sidekick through events large and small.
Large, like the years of my mother’s path through fragility to death.
Small, like that time we visited Walden Pond and took goofy photos with the statue outside the replica of the Thoreau cabin. It was Bear who suggested I sit at the desk inside and close my eyes and think a while about quiet and space, pen and notebook, which gave me the idea to put our chairs together later in English 102 to make the exact dimensions of 10 feet by 15 feet and have the students take turns inventing journal passages from inside a soothing tiny house shape.
Ten by fifteen is just about the size of the glow from a woodstove, I thought last night. The bears threw their annual “First Fire” party. (Yes, once you allow one stuffed bear into your life, others arrive.) It wasn’t really cold enough for the woodstove, but I wanted to do a practice run with shaggy bark juniper to make a good warm hum of heat. Bear, Boo, Tuli and the Lost One sat with the flames absolutely sure this is going to be the best winter ever.
“Above average snow?” I ask, meaning to check on Lee Born’s predictions.
“It’s not about the snow,” says Tuli. Her name is the Finnish word for fire, so of course she’d give snow short shrift.
“Election buzz finally ending?” I murmur wistfully.
“That reminds me,” says Boo. “Have you read Molly Ivins about that other rich business man who ran for president? Ross Perot. See “Billionaire Boyscout” in Time, June 1992.” Yes, Boo is a bear archivist, but why wouldn’t a bear have a long memory, napping so much through winter.
The Lost One said nothing. He is the smallest bear, a palm-size bear I found beside I-40 once when I was driving from Williams to Ashfork. After a good bath I sewed on new ears and a nose. I think he is grateful though he has never said so. I’m pretty sure the new ears make him a good listener—which is what my heart craves in these tumultuous days of foreign wars and wacko politics, climate despair and domestic uncertainty; I want a witness to my sighs. Add in a bear in a leather jacket to help navigate toward the bright cheer of sunrise, and a gal can just about get by.
