There is a mountain in Colorado that is home to hundreds of thousands of aspen and pine trees (why, that could be ANY mountain in Colorado, you might say- you’re right, of course, but shh, I’m talking now). Near the top of this mountain sits a pond. Ducks and beavers and muskrats play in this pond, and deer and elk and sometimes bears or moose come to drink from it. Grass grows along the edges of the water, and beyond the grass are berry bushes and thistles and trees.
A cabin sits on one side of the pond, just a short way up a small hill. Behind the cabin is the forest again, and tucked in amongst the trees is an outhouse made of logs and lacking a door (this allows a person to take in the view of the pond whilst taking care of business- don’t look at me like that, I didn’t build it that way).
It is to this mountain, this pond, and this cabin (and occasionally this outhouse) that I go when it’s time to get away from the same old, same old, and escape from the drudgery of the daily grind.
The cabin and the property on which it sits belongs to my husband’s grandparents, and it is a place where family gathers for a weekend, or a week, and the best breakfasts are served and dinners are eaten as the sun goes down (or occasionally well after the sun sets, in which case, burgers or steaks or chicken is consumed by lantern light and miller moths are fought off).
It’s also the starting or ending place for many a family feud, but that’s to be expected and is really neither here nor there. Well, it IS there, on the mountain, but as I was saying…
Inside the cabin is cozy, if a bit dusty and cobwebbed, and it feels, if not quite like home (because if it was just like home, there’d be precious little point in going there to get away from home), then the next best thing.
But outside of the cabin is the best part. Outside is the pond, and the trees, and the beavers. Outside is a huge expanse of woodsy world to be explored, paths to follow, and creatures to meet.
I once wandered down the long, golden aspen leaf-covered driveway (a bit like following the Yellow Brick Road, in fact), and as I came around a bend, I caught a glimpse of a huge black bear standing just on the other side of a clump of bushes. Of course I stopped dead in my tracks, breath caught in my throat, legs beginning to tremble. I stood very still for over a minute, straining my eyes in that dream-like light that was trickling through the golden leaves over head, hoping against hope that the bear wouldn’t move toward me.
After several minutes, the bear hadn’t so much as turned its head, and I began to wonder if it was perhaps sleeping there on the side of the road.
And then I began to wonder if maybe I should take a few steps closer, and so I did. My feet crunched over leaves and gravel, and still the bear didn’t move. I slowly crept up on it, until finally I was only two or three feet away.
I don’t know if it was due to the dim light, or because in my mind I was already certain I was looking at a bear (though you have to wonder, as I do now, what I thought I was doing getting that close if I REALLY thought it was a bear), but when I came up close like that, it took a foggy thirty seconds or so before I was able to process the fact that this bear was not furry as I had expected it to be.
In fact, this black bear was rather gray looking, a bit jagged in some places and too round in others, and didn’t appear to have a head at all.
This bear had green and yellow and orange moss growing on it.
Before I’d fully realized that I was looking at a boulder and NOT a bear, I’d reached my hand out and placed it on the cold stone.
And then, oh how I laughed!
As I came to my senses several minutes later, it occurred to me that just because the first bear I’d ever encountered had turned out not to be a bear at all, it didn’t mean that there weren’t OTHER bears around, or possibly mountain lions, or bull elk or moose that wouldn’t appreciate coming face to face with me. It had NOT, of course, entered my mind that any animal that may have been around the area would have high-tailed it out of there at the sound of my hysterics a moment earlier, and I therefore did the only sensible thing I could do at that point and turned and sprinted back up the driveway and to the cabin, where I proceeded to be laughed at by my husband.
In all fairness (to me and my over-active imagination), there has been evidence of bears near the cabin; tracks sometimes, and once a jug of orange juice that got left behind was torn to shreds.
It’s those sorts of experiences, however, that keep me going back up that mountain (that and the promise of piping hot pancakes, naturally). For me, it’s a place to explore, a place to have an adventure…
Even an imaginary one.
Note: I did not take a photo of my “bear”…probably I was scared stupid.
Cristen's Corner 