Tracks of the Sugar Bear

 It took a few seconds, a few wheel rotations before I realized what I was seeing in the dirt and dust. There, mixed in with the tire tread tracks and the prints of running shoes, were paw prints - prints far too large to have been made by a dog. I swerved hard to the right in an attempt to avoid running through any that might have been in front of me, and came to a stop. I back-tracked afoot to where the tracks first became noticeable, turned and then walked forward following them. Mostly the tracks headed in one direction, but every so often they turned and went back. More interesting, maybe, the tracks were more than one size - a momma and a cub or to I guessed, ambling along as bears tend to do, the cubs maybe going ahead then turning back from time to time. 

I had seen the big pile of scat up in the figgy forest on the Heights Trail, and other dirt-riding friends had reported evidence of local bears in The Out There but, other than that pile, these track were the first definitive evidence to present itself to my eyes. I guessed they must have traveled through under cover of darkness, or perhaps pre-dawn light, but were they laying low, somewhere nearby now, in the shade of the basin's trees, or had they made it up to some mountain fastness they knew of. 

The summer dry always brings the bears down to the urban fringes, searching for water and food. Already this year there have been sightings in others of the foothill cities - bears on the streets, bears in swimming pools. These tracks, this close to home suggest there will be more such sightings before the summer dry soaks up the next rainfall relief. 

"There was someone

who had a bear as a pet.

He used to come running all the time in a bad mood

to his house

and he used to want to bite people.

They used to quickly give him sugar

as soon as he arrived

to make him happy.

And so we used to say

when someone is coming to the house,

one who is angry,

"Quickly set his sugar down in front of him."

(Mary J. Lee, Chumash)

Looking back over the years, I can recall three close encounters with bears, one in Kings Canyon, one at Lake Tahoe, and the closest of all at Wolverton following a fifty-mile backpack trip. Since I didn't actually see the bear(s) that made these track, this was no close encounter like those others. In any case, I'm glad none involved angry bears, since in none of the instances did I have any bowls of sugar with me.