Call of the Wild
Sandhill Road, New Hampshire
Call of the Wild
My favorite roads ramble and twist under leafy green tree canopies in spring and summer and shimmer in reds and gold in autumn, giving us a hint of what lays beyond the forest and the majestic Monadnock Mountain peaking above it. Come winter, the trees bare all, like the opening night of a play when the curtain glides across the stage. The landscape sparkles in a beautiful snowy white blanket, the applause and gasps are shared by many for months to come. My hometown of Peterborough, New Hampshire abounds with these roads.
The road I love most is East Mountain Road, it is a road that tells me I am nearly home. It is also the one where I had a “life moment”. More on that shortly. The road is a few miles long, connecting one mountain to another. It is quietly forested, lightly traveled. You can hear cars coming before you see them in the spring as they dip and sway, left to right, trying to avoid cavernous potholes, depressions in the asphalt after a long winter. I sympathize with the drivers as they pass me walking, I am often one of them. Eventually, the craters are filled with asphalt by the town’s highway crews, the depressions long forgotten. Once filled, we who live amongst plentiful wildlife, are then mindful of dodging chipmunks who can’t seem to make up their mind to go left or right, squirrels that think they can beat any other creature across the road including a car, and the occasional skittish turkey that contemplates its next step while you slow down to let it think about it. Traveling this road where the wilderness of the New Hampshire forest meets the edge of the road, well, we never know what will appear next.
About that day.
I got an early start that summer morning. We were in the midst of construction, re-building our carriage house to create a peaceful living space to gather and enjoy the beauty of the woods. The building crew arrived each morning at 6:45am, the anticipation and clamor of construction tended to get everyone up with the rising sun. I was looking forward to a little escape from the clickity-clack of nail guns and rumbling of trucks up the drive.
In fact, I was feeling euphorically energized. A creative vision for my next project was close, and I needed to "walk it out" to explore the ideas that were sparking in my right brain’s hemisphere. I started from our home, Tahilla Farm, a meandering country property at the end of a dirt road. I slipped my headphones into my ears to listen to a podcast with French photographer, Flore Vallery-Radot. Flore talked about photography workshops she ran in her childhood family home in Burgundy, France. My mind was spilling over with possibilities both in France and at Tahilla Farm. Would people be interested in coming to our property for a creative retreat? Would I rather escape to Burgundy and photograph French vineyards while sipping on Beaujolais? As another swaying truck thundered past me, I felt France was winning.
I walked along, past the sweeps of hemlock and Eastern white pine trees lining the soft undulating curves of our road before turning onto Sandhill Road, a long, windy, hilly road that stretches around the back of a mountain. Parts of the road still retain some of the spirit of early settlers. The first settlers arrived in 1739, carving their homesteads and farms into the wilderness. Some of those land holdings still exist, generations later. It is more common to see the occasional American colonial style homes painted in hues of grey and white, a red barn close by. Pink and red geraniums spill forth under tidy post boxes at the start of driveways in summer. As I closed in on the corner of East Mountain Road, the sun shone brilliantly, a bright spotlight through the overhanging beech, maple, and oak trees. Shadows of light danced underfoot as if the canopy above was casting a special showing just for me.
It was one of those quintessential summer days. A soft wind swept me along to the accompaniment of Goldfinch, Tufted Titmouse, Black-and-white Warblers as well as Flore’s beautiful French accented English describing her creative dreams. The road eases you up slowly for a good long stretch. It then gently curves down again for a little respite before repeating the pattern. I walk at a clipped pace, my long legs carrying me at a speed I am comfortable with. My children say I walk too fast. “It's just me, I can’t help it” I say. So on that day, I settled into my pace, allowing myself to stop and take photos when beauty presented itself, which is often in New Hampshire.
My walking destination on East Mountain Road is always the same, a spot of land where the full production of one of my favorite scenes appears. A dreamy meadow of whispering wildflowers softly flows towards the road. At its center, a path that speaks to me of poetry as it rambles between long sheaths of glistening grass and wildflower, to the top of a hill, between a red farmhouse and barn. From my spot I can only see the tips of the buildings, a hint of barn red on both. Beyond the buildings North Pack Mountain emerges in all its glory. From this spot, I feel I could almost reach out and touch it. If only I could.
Eastern Mountain Road, New Hampshire
A life moment.
What happened next is folklore in my family. They say to anyone who will listen “You won't believe what happened to Jeanne" and "Mom, tell them about the day you walked alone on East Mountain Road.”
Ok, I’ll tell you.
With the meadow and North Pack behind me, I slipped my headphones into my ears returning to thoughts of France and began the walk home. A stirring movement to my left and a massive tumbling of fur made me pause. With thunderous speed and piercing noise, one small black bear jumped onto the road just feet away from me followed by a second much larger bear. My inner and outer landscape fused together in a fraction of a second. I was transfixed and paralyzed. I imagined being wedged inside a prism of glass that could fracture at any moment. I stopped breathing as I processed the scene just feet in front of me, trying to remember, without success, every word I had ever read on what to do when you encounter a bear. My mind was blank.
Later that day, I would return to this moment and my reactions as I read the New Hampshire Fish and Game website. I discovered Black Bears (Ursus americanus) are the only bear species in New Hampshire. The adult female is called a sow and weighs up to 180 lbs; the male is called a boar and can weigh up to 660 lbs.
The instructions I should have remembered when encountering a bear:
When you see a bear, keep your distance. Well, I would have if I could have!
Make it aware of your presence by clapping, talking, singing, or making other sounds. Really??
The first bear was a cub, a young one that seemed to have the bravado and wild enthusiasm of every youngster, jumping through vegetation on the forests edge onto the road. Regardless of me.
The thunderous roar that followed was the mother bear in exasperated chase of her cub, she soared over the wayward cub to land nose to nose with her charge, her huge teeth blazing in anger. If I could have translated bear to human, I swear that mother said, "I told you to never play on the road!" In a flash, the cub reversed back into the woods, the sow in hot pursuit, nose to the cub's bottom. Regardless of me.
I exhaled. Allowing curiosity to get the better of me, I had to look. It was a trifecta: a cub, its mother and me. Mom and her cub were a distance away now, the main attraction in a woodland forest. I saw nothing, heard nothing, but them. I was further away but still close enough for mom to reach me in an instant. The scolded cub shimmied its way to the top of a large white pine tree, taking refuge on an upper branch, looking down at its mother, standing at the bottom of the tree. Her compact head and sizable barrel-shaped body stood close to seven feet. By the time my eyes rested on her head, she was staring straight at me.
If you get too close to a bear, it may slap the ground, huff, blow and chomp it’s teeth or rush you. If this occurs maintain eye contact with the bear, speak in a soft calm voice, and slowly back away from the bear. Again, I was still paralyzed.
I couldn't break her gaze, I didn't know how to. It did not feel wise to look away either. At that moment, something strange happened, I felt it deep within. The sow's energy was familiar, the scene was familiar. She was protecting her own, just as I do mine. I am the oldest of six siblings and the mother of four. I know what it is like to be the leader and protector of the pack.
DO NOT RUN; avert your eyes or turn your back to the bear. The bear may perceive weakness and enforce dominance. Phew, I remembered that one!
The next roar was maternal, directed to the cub, slightly gentler as if to explain to the cub the consequences of its actions. I didn't know what to do next. I thought, "Do I move, or do I stay?" The sow looked up at the cub in the tree again, then she looked at me, mother to mother, as if to say, "Go now, time to move on; this little one has learned its lesson."
The bear's bluff charge and chomping of teeth are a defense mechanism to establish the bear's dominance in an encounter with humans or a more dominant animal in the wild. I was clearly not the more dominant animal here.
I made a decision. I had to do something. I stepped forward, towards home, past the bears, eyes straight ahead, one foot in front of the other, calmly and silently, my feet barely touching the ground, as if on tippy toes. I prayed I would not encounter a pothole along the way. I did not break my stride; Flore was still speaking, but I did not hear a word. I was more worried that the sow would change its mind and charge after me. I was at its mercy.
Bears can outrun, out-swim, and out-climb you. If you are attacked by a black bear, you should fight rather than "play dead." It was not a fight I cared to think about.
Finally, minutes later, I stopped at the bottom of the hill and turned around. If the sow was setting after me, I needed to know. Thankfully, a bucolic country road stretched before me, not a bear in sight. The scene had ended, the curtain had drawn closed on the stage. I rewound the podcast back to the beginning and walked home past the shadows of light playing under my feet, the American colonial homes with red and pink geraniums tucked under post boxes to our road.
By the time I reached the end of our dirt road I was walking so fast I was near jet propulsion. I tore up our driveway at breakneck speed and screamed out to the building crew “I CAME FACE TO FACE WITH A BEAR AND HER CUB ON THE ROAD!”
Six seasoned New Hampshirites, men and women who knew the woods and its inhabitants well were astonished. Questions followed: “Did the mother bear charge you?” “Did you run?" “Were you scared?” I answered no to all of them and fibbed a little about being scared. I was and I wasn’t, how could I explain that? Shaking heads they all agreed and said “You were very lucky.”
When I tell the tale today people ask “Do you still walk in the woods alone?" Yes, I do. Have I walked on that stretch of road since then? No, not yet. Though I think about it often.
In what I call my "close encounter,” it felt as if I was being pulled into the realm of a wild I had never witnessed before. And I was. The energy that day felt otherworldly. In a moment when I could have panicked, when fear in other situations had caused me to react sharply, I stayed calm, eerily so. I didn't scream because I didn't feel threatened. Perhaps I was naive but I felt connected to those animals, to the wild, and to nature, in a way I could not have imagined.
My friend Swift, a forester and man comfortable with the wilderness, told me bears are timid creatures, more afraid of us. He said when I walk in the woods, chances are one is hidden and watching. He was surprised in my encounter that the sow did not react aggressively toward me. I was the threat; a cub was near, and it could have responded on principle. He said I was lucky.
There are some things I do not mention to people. They might think I am away with the bear fairies. I do feel, without a doubt, since that encounter, a sacred appreciation for the wilderness and the creatures living within its depth. I am more thoughtful on my solitary wanders in the woods and often think about the cub and its mother, hoping they fared well in their travels. And then I think of another sow and her cub.
A year or two later I drove onto our road and spotted a cub happily bounding down the road. I stayed a good distance behind and watched with fascination. Within seconds the sow followed from the brush. They walked away from me. I inched my car along behind them. The sow stopped, turned around, and stared at me, willing me to stop, and I did. I could feel her words “Stop, he is moving at his own pace, we will be gone soon, just wait.” I held back a big longer before the cub scurried over a rock and into the depths of the forest. The sow turned one last time, looking back at me, as if to say, “thank you for being mindful” and followed her cub.
Between you and me, after two bear encounters, I feel a special kinship with bears. How could I not?
I am a big believer in “signs,” when things happen to us for unexplained reasons and per chance have a deeper meaning. I speak of spirit animals and talismans. The bear spirit animal is a symbol of strength and courage. During my first bear encounter I feel I had courage in spades. Bear spirit animals are meant to help people find balance and comfort during introspective times in their life. I live in the woods, introspection is my life.
Talismans can be an object or written words you might carry with you. The possibilities are endless and for the person holding one, it can act as a form of intention to protect and bring good luck. I do not wear a bear claw talisman around my neck or sport a tattoo to show my affinity for the animal. My talisman is within, like the prism of glass I sensed during my first encounter, the feeling of my inner and outer landscape as one, in harmony. Not shattered, but strong and whole. I sensed it that day, I felt eerily calm in what could have been a disastrous situation for me, it was unexplainable what happened that day and still is.
During my woodland walks I collect smooth stones, turkey feathers, weathered wood, interesting pattern leaves, lots of pinecones and masses of deep green moss…all the things a bear encounters in our woods. They are my talisman, my inner call to the wild, my outer hymn to nature and bears.
From the safety of my car, my second bear encounter.
