Bear Brownie: The Life of a Bear

by Harry Perry Robinson

I saw my father raising his head and shoulders slowly out of the water and beginning to look about him. That gave me courage, and I did the same. The first thing that I realized was that the roaring was less loud, and then, though it was still almost intolerably hot, I found that it was possible to keep one's head in the open air and one's eyes open. Looking back, I saw that the line of flame had already swept far away, and was even now surmounting the top of the next high ridge; and it was, I knew, at that moment devouring the familiar cedars by our home, just as it had devoured the trees on either side of the beavers' pool. On all sides of us the bigger trees were still in flames, and from everywhere thick white smoke was rising, and over all the mountain-side, right down to the water's edge, there was not one green leaf or twig. Everything was black. The brushwood was completely gone. The trees were no more than bare trunks, some of them still partially wreathed in flames. The whole earth was black, and from every side rose columns and jets and streams of smoke. It seemed incredible that such a change could have been wrought so instantaneously. It was awful. Just a few minutes and what had been a mountain-side clothed in splendid trees, making one dense shield of green, sloping down to the bottom-land by the stream, with its thickets of undergrowth, and all the long cool green herbage by the water, had been swept away, and in its place was only a black and smoking wilderness. And what we saw before our eyes was the same for miles and miles to north and south of us, for a hundred miles to the west from which the fire had come; and every few minutes, as long as the wind held, carried desolation another mile to eastward.

And what of all the living things that had died? Had the animals and birds that had passed us earlier in the day escaped? The deer which had fled from the pool at the last moment—they, I knew, must have been overtaken in that first terrible rush of the flames; and I wondered what the chances were that the bears who had declined to stay with us, the squirrels, the coyote, the pumas, and the hosts of birds that had been hurrying eastward all day, would be able to keep moving long enough to save themselves. And what of all the insects and smaller things that must be perishing by millions every minute? I do not know whether I was more frightened at the thought of what we had escaped or grateful to my father for the course he had taken.

It is improbable that I thought of all this at the time, but I know I was dreadfully frightened; and it makes me laugh now to think what a long time it was before we could persuade Kahwa to put her head above water and look about her. Our eyes and throats were horribly sore, but otherwise none of us was hurt. But though we were alive, life did not look very bright for us. Where should we go? That was the first question. And what should we find to eat in all this smoking wilderness? While we sat in the middle of the pool wondering what we could do or whether it would be safe to do anything, we saw Grey Wolf start to go away. He climbed out on the bank while his wife sat in the water and watched him. He got out safely, and then put his nose down to snuff at the ground. The instant his nose touched the earth he gave a yelp, and plunged back into the water again. He had burnt the tip of his nose, for the ground was baking hot, as we soon discovered for ourselves. When we first stepped out on shore, our feet were so wet that we did not feel the heat, but in a few seconds they began to dry, and then the sooner we scrambled back into the water again, the better.

How long it would have taken the earth to cool again I do not know. It was covered with a layer of burned stuff, ashes, and charred wood, which everywhere continued smouldering underneath, and all through the morning of the next day little spirals of smoke were rising from the ground in every direction. Fortunately, at mid-day came a thunderstorm which lasted well on towards evening, and when the rain stopped the ground had ceased smoking. Many of the trees still smouldered and burned inside. Sometimes the flame would eat its way out again to the surface, so that the tree would go on burning in the middle of the wet forest until it was consumed; and for days afterwards, on scratching away the stuff on the surface, we would come to a layer of half burned sticks that was still too hot to touch.

We of course kept to the stream. There along the edges we found food, for the rushes and grass and plants of all kinds had burned to the water-line, but below that the stems and roots remained fresh and good. But it was impossible to avoid getting the black dust into one's nose and mouth, and our throats and nostrils were still full of the smell of the smoke. No amount of water would wash it out. The effect of the thunderstorm soon passed off, and by the next day everything was as dry as ever, and the least puff of wind filled the air with clouds of black powder which made us sneeze, and, getting into our eyes, kept them red and sore. I do not think that in all my life I have spent such a miserable time as during those days while we were trying to escape from the region of the fire.

Of course, we did not know that there was any escape. Perhaps the whole world had burned. But my father was sure that we should get out of it some time or other if we only kept straight on. And keep on we did, hardly ever leaving the water, but travelling on and on up the stream as it got smaller and smaller, until finally there was no stream at all, but only a spring bubbling out of the mountain-side. So we crossed over the burnt ground until we came to the beginning of another stream on the other side, and followed that down just as we had followed the first one up. And perhaps the most dreadful thing all the time was the utter silence of the woods. As a rule, both day and night, they were full of the noises of other animals and birds, but now there was not a sound in all the mountains. We seemed to be the only living things left.

The stream which we now followed was that on which the men whom we had seen were camping, and presently we came to the place where they had been. The chopped-log house was a pile of ashes and half-burnt wood. About the ruins we found all sorts of curious things that were new to us—among them, things which I now know were kettles and frying-pans; and we came across lumps of their food, but it was all too much covered with the black powder to be eatable. There we stayed for the best part of a day, and then we went on without having seen a sign of man himself, and wondering what had become of him.

Seven or eight days had passed since the fire, when, the day after we passed the place where man had lived, we came to a beaver-dam across the stream, and the beavers told us that, some hours before the fire reached there, they had seen the men hurrying downstream, but they did not know whether they had succeeded in escaping or not. And now other life began to reappear. We met badgers and woodchucks and rats which had taken refuge in their holes, and had at first been unable to force their way out again through the mass of burnt stuff which covered the ground and choked up their burrows. The air, too, began to be full of insects, which had been safe underground or in the hearts of trees, and were now hatching out. And then we met birds—woodpeckers first, and afterwards jays, which were working back into the burnt district, and from them it was that we first learned for certain that it was only a burnt district, and that there was part of the world which had escaped. So we pushed on, until one morning, when daylight came, we saw in the distance a hill-top on which the trees still stood with all their leaves unconsumed. And how good and cool it looked!

We did not stop to sleep, but travelled on all through the day, going as fast as we could along the rocky edges of the stream, which was now almost wide enough to be a river, when suddenly we heard strange noises ahead of us, and we knew what the noises were, and that they meant man again. Men were coming towards us along the bank of the stream, so we had to leave it and hurry into the woods. There, though there was no shelter but the burnt tree-stumps, we were safe and all we had to do was to squat perfectly still, and it was impossible even for us, at a little distance, to distinguish each other from burnt tree-stumps. So we sat and watched the men pass. There were five of them, each carrying a bundle nearly as big as himself on his back, and they laughed and talked noisily as they passed, without a suspicion that four bears were looking at them from less than a hundred yards away.

As soon as they had passed, we went on again, and before evening we came to places where the trees were only partly burned; here and there one had escaped altogether. Then, close by the stream, a patch of willows was as green and fresh as if there had been no fire; and at last we had left the burnt country behind us. How good it was—the smell of the dry pine-needles and the good, soft brown earth underneath, and the delight of the taste of food that was once more free from smoke, and the glory of that first roll in the green grass among the fresh, juicy undergrowth by the water!