Bears Again

We returned Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning it was pleasant to run with a large group of runners, including one of the new Presbyterian Co-Pastors.  Now if the Methodist Pastor can recover from injuries he has apparently sustained and join us again, we can have some good theological discussions out on the road, like "How many miles do you get out of a pair of shoes? or "How fast are we going, anyway?"  These are important theological issues!

Today I ran up Big Bearpen and saw the biggest bear I have seen while out running.  He (or she) loomed up on my left at a house just before the fork in the road at the summit, leaped a split-rail fence, and then lumbered off into the back yard.  There is only one way down Big Bearpen (unless one goes "cross country," as Fred reminded me when I saw him carrying his trash down to the road a couple of minutes later), and so I made some noise as I passed that spot in the road, clearing my throat and speaking nonsense in a loud voice.  "Hey Bear, watch out now, here comes the Crown of Creation, yee-hah (hmmph hmmph), go on now . . ."

He (or she) was long gone, probably down on Fifth Street by then on the garbage-can route.  There are plenty of acorns this year, after all - is there a hard winter coming? - and the only reason these creatures come near "The Crown of Creation" at all is that they have come to prefer dog food and left-over pizza and bags of Cheetos left on the front seat of pickup trucks to their normal fare.  "A fed bear is a dead bear," as the saying goes. 

But this one was very much alive.  And healthy.