Bears in the Woods — Part 4 of 4

When We Found Our Way Back Home

One of my Bear Family Tales, gentle woodland stories of family, seasons, and the old ways.

The Return Home

We stayed for a long time in our home, our second home, where Grandma fussed over me and loved me so very, very much. Our time there was precious and magical, educational and full of things going on. But our home with Grandma and Grandpa wasn’t safe anymore. The forest was thin and it was getting thinner. The edges of our magnificent woods were fast disappearing; humans had been seen by Daddy and Grandpa, and they were always taking our trees.

We packed our things onto Daddy’s and Grandpa’s pull‑along and stuffed our wicker cart with all that we could fit in. Emptying the cupboard‑hole came first. Mainly dried fruits and nuts and Daddy’s honey cakes and Grandpa’s crushed‑ant biscuits. Then it was anything and everything that would fit. Everything of value that Mummy and Grandma thought we couldn’t be without; especially the herbs and spices, bits and bobs and whatnot, which Mummy always wanted under our seating on the cart.

On our journey, Mummy and Grandma sat on the buckboard and Daddy pulled the cart once he’d been harnessed up. I walked, as there wasn’t room for three bears to sit on the cart, and Grandpa pulled the pull‑along. The journey home to the thatched cottage was long and full of new mysteries. This return journey was a new adventure for me.

I had been a very small bear when we packed up and left our first home, but I remember it fondly. We lived in an oak cottage, in a thick ancient forest. It was heavenly, both in the cottage and in the woods. I could play and roam. I could forage for berries, worms and bugs and I could go hunting and fishing with Mummy and Daddy whenever I wanted to. This was and always would be my best home, my best cub‑hood memories; I loved it, but I was bigger now; nearly, but not quite full grown. The journey, my tasks and my alertness were different from the journey away and I saw everything in a brand‑new way.

On our travels, I took my turn at pulling the pull‑along and I even harnessed up and pulled the cart with Mummy and Grandma sitting on it; I felt really useful.

Grandma would growl at me as if she was an angry bear, and she’d flick the reins to encourage me to go faster or to slow down when she pulled back on them. She always giggled and laughed with Mummy when she did this, and it really was fun.

“Pulling your weight at last,” Daddy would say to me. But I never understood what he meant. I tried to understand “pulling your weight,” but both the cart and the pull‑along were heavier than me. Daddy always said silly things that meant nothing.

On the way home to our ancient forest, we stopped often along the way. Sometimes we only stopped for as long as it took the sun to go from here to there, but other times we stayed in the same place as the moon came and went two or even three times. Mummy and Grandma insisted that Daddy, Grandpa and I had good rest periods. They always said that we, the males of the family, would run into trouble before they could run from it…

Mummy and Grandma were smart; they always had crafty, twisty answers.

We ate together when we camped. Often in caves that Grandpa, and sometimes Daddy, just knew were there. We foraged, dug and scraped for what Mummy called familiar food, and each time we found a new type of food above or below ground, Mummy would do her toothy smile and chuckle.

New things always seemed to make my Mummy chuckle‑happy.

Sometimes, as the sun came up, there was cloudy mist, thick and clingy. It smelt of decay and things changing from new to old. It felt like the air itself was solid, like you could cuddle into it, and nothing could harm you as you stood or lay in it; Grandma said so. The air was cool and it was beautiful. It was like a cold soup, lovely to sleep in; and we did sleep in it.

Grandpa said it reminded him of something, but he never shared his memory.

We crossed swollen rivers that ran black and brown and shallow streams and silent ponds that reflected every image upside‑down. We climbed hills that rose upward and upward, ever higher, in air that got cleaner and fresher the higher we climbed. Life seemed both new and at a standstill on the steep slopes. Pulling the cart up hills, over bumpy and almost non‑existing tracks, was hard work. Daddy did most of the cart pulling on the ups, and I let Grandpa walk whilst I pulled his pull‑along. Often Mummy and Grandma would go on foraging trips with me or Daddy or Grandpa when the way ahead was slow going. Two would stay and pull and three would forage for fresh nourishment. This turn‑taking, foraging suggestion was Mummy’s idea. She said, and Grandma agreed, that this would help rest the males. It would build in rest periods and shorten our journey time, and feed our bellies for free. Mummy and Grandma always had the answers to anything complicated and important.

When we found food in foraging expeditions, we filled our baskets to overflowing, and freely ate as much as we could straight from the vine or branch or from under boulders. This was a fun season; a season of plenty and a season of returning and new growth. I remember hoping and wishing it would never end — the journey seemed more than the journey’s end.

I listened to many stories from my Grandpa, both as we walked and pulled and round our earth table as we cooked and ate and cleaned; and I started telling my own tall tales on this magnificent journey. Tales that were, or one day might be, true.

The down‑slopes were almost worse than the up‑slopes. We all walked on the down‑slopes and often even had to empty some of our stuff out of the cart to make it lighter and easier to lower. Grandma suggested that we make three more pull‑alongs, and we did. And Mummy suggested making fern basket‑socks to lay and tie onto harnesses that we could carry ourselves and lessen the weight put onto the carts. We made the baskets with the main stems of the ferns. We stripped away the smaller offshoot stems and weaved the central stems together, then filled the finished socks with cart stuff. How Daddy managed, on his own, on the first journey from our thatched cottage, was both amazing and a mystery to me; considering that he brought everything. But he did, somehow, pull it all. He managed really well… Daddy bear was big and strong. Mummy bear was full of answers, and I liked being useful.

When finally our old thatched cottage came into view we’d been travelling, I think, for nearly a whole season; and what a sight it was. Mummy and Daddy, Grandpa, Grandma and I jumped with joy; our home was still standing. Roof or no roof, our cottage was still there.

We unpacked and put away our food into the cottage cupboard‑hole, but only after Grandpa got down into it and clawed it out nice and clean. Mummy and Grandma placed their herbs and spices and bits and bobs where they wanted… and over four sun and moon rises and fallings, we all cleared off the old rotten roof and re‑thatched the cottage with sod, reed and straw.

We foraged and roamed all over our ancient forest and on one super‑amazing day, whilst out with Grandma and Daddy, we discovered something almost beyond belief… The flattened, ruined forest had regrown. It was full of new young trees and new life. Wildlife had moved in and could easily be seen, and nature’s scars, though still visible, were well on their way to healing.

I asked Daddy, “Why do humans take our big, amazing trees and leave the ground with nothing?” but Daddy just shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know the answer to that question — but Grandma did…

“Because they can, little bear. The answer is that easy,” she said with a big sigh. “They are greedy and selfish and they do it just because they can.” Grandma always had the answers to anything important.

We loved our home, my first and last home. I stayed there for as long as I was loved and I was loved way beyond my own cubs.

As a family — Mummy and Daddy, Grandpa, Grandma and I — we lived and thrived in our family cottage. And like most good fairy tales, and sometimes tall tales as well, we lived, with a watchful eye and a keen ear on human activity, happily ever after.

Good night little bear, whoever and wherever you may be, good night.

The End