🐻 The Day I became Goldilocks
Sometimes the thing we fear becomes the neighbor we learn to understand.
When I first moved into the forest in Colorado, I was afraid of the wildlife.
Especially the bears.
I bought a bear bell.
I bought bear spray.
I was convinced I needed to protect myself from these enormous wild creatures wandering through the forest around my home.
And then I actually began living with them.
It turned out that at least one of them was considerably more interested in my groceries than he was in me.
One day, I baked cookies.
I left the dining room window open and went upstairs.
Sometime while I was sleeping, a bear came through the window and helped himself.
He ate all my cookies.
Then apparently deciding dessert wasn’t sufficient, he investigated the rest of the kitchen.
Sugar.
Flour.
The refrigerator.
By the time he finished, there was white powder everywhere, complete with bear footprints traveling through it.
And then he pooped.
Of all the places available to a bear standing inside someone’s house, he chose the little entryway rug by the door.
I have no idea whether that was intentional.
But considering that I had wool rugs elsewhere in the house, I remain grateful for this small act of apparent consideration. 😂
When I came downstairs and discovered what had happened, I realized that I had slept through the entire thing.
A bear had broken into my house, eaten my cookies, raided my refrigerator, redecorated with flour, used the entryway rug as a bathroom—
and I hadn’t heard a thing.
That was how I became Goldilocks.
Apparently, in my version of the story, Goldilocks sleeps upstairs while the bear eats her food.
🌻 The Sunflower Incident
A couple of days later, my visitor returned.
I kept a large barrel of sunflower seeds near the back door.
At about five one morning, I came downstairs and looked out toward the dining room.
There he was.
His head was buried in the barrel.
He had tipped the whole thing over and was happily helping himself.
This time, I was awake.
I tiptoed over to the window.
Then I slapped the glass.
“HEY!”
The bear startled, took off, and disappeared.
But he left sunflower seeds scattered everywhere.
And for the rest of that year, sunflowers appeared in the strangest places around my yard.
The bear had accidentally planted them.
🌲 The Bears in the Ponderosa
There was another side to living among the bears, too.
In town stood an enormous old Ponderosa pine, with branches so large that a mama bear and her babies could climb up into it and simply lounge.
Every so often, we would get lucky enough to see them there.
Mama stretched out on one of those gigantic branches, the babies nearby, all of them resting high above the ground as comfortably as though the tree had grown especially for them.
They were so cute.
And there was something almost unbelievable about seeing animals I had once been so afraid of doing something so ordinary—sleeping, resting, keeping their babies close.
From below, we could just look up and watch them for a while.
No broken windows.
No stolen cookies.
No sunflower seeds scattered across the yard.
Just a mama, her babies, and an old Ponderosa pine holding all of them.
🐻 What Became Visible
Something changed for me during the time I lived in that forest.
Before I lived among wild animals, much of what I knew about them was fear.
The bear bell and bear spray represented what I imagined might happen.
Living there gave me something different:
experience
The bears I encountered were certainly powerful animals, and they could be remarkably destructive.
They broke into things.
Bent the chain link fence top rail like it was nothing.
They made enormous messes.
And if food was available, they were going to investigate it.
But the encounters I actually had were not the encounters I had imagined before moving there.
When I made myself big, yelled, or frightened them away, the bears I encountered left.
That doesn’t mean bears are harmless.
They are wild animals, and I would never confuse familiarity with safety.
But I learned there is a difference between respecting something because it is powerful and living in fear of it because we don’t yet understand it.
I had moved into their forest carrying a bear bell and bear spray.
Not long afterward, I was standing at a window yelling at a bear to get his head out of my sunflower seeds.
And after he left?
The sunflowers grew anyway.
Maybe that is my favorite part of the story.
Something I had once been terrified to encounter came through my life, made an unbelievable mess, ate all my cookies—
and accidentally planted flowers.
🍯 One More Thing…
The bear ate the cookies
raided the refrigerator
and planted the sunflowers.
Thankfully, he left the honey alone. 😂
Continue to 🍯 Honey Infusions
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