BLACK BEARS AND BLUE BERRIES

Being married and with children and both of us working full time jobs as well didn't leave a whole lot of "real" together time for us.
It happened several years ago that I was blueberrying while my husband was doing a little fishing with some of his buddies.

I was bored with the fishing and the company so I decided to do a little berrying and I just happened to make the acquaintance of a black bear. Well, we didn't really take all that much time to get acquainted, let's just say we met.

It was in Tinmouth, Vermont at a place called Chipman Lake or Tinmouth Pond, it goes by both names. It was a lake but the land is claiming it back, so now it's a pond.

It is a pleasant walk around the lake and makes a wonderful day hike with lots to see, beautiful flora and fauna including a few endangered species. Just beyond the Pavilion Dance hall, or what used to be when I was frequenting this spot, is an open piece of land that belongs to or used to belong to the Church of England. It just sits there in its wild state, the church not making any use of it that I have ever been aware of. Just a short distance from the wood line between the lake and the more densely forested area in this open area owned by the church is a fair size stand of low shrubs, BLUEBERRIES, wonderful, succulent, tongue tantalizing blueberries and good size one too. They are meaty and sweet and that deep midnight purple-blue of a real good blueberry. These blueberries are some of the best blueberries I've ever tasted.

Well, the berries were right at their peak this particular day and I decided I should pick myself some of them, at least enough for some of those wonderful blueberry pancakes and a couple of pies and I commenced picking. Things were going along real fine and the picking was fairly easy. At least I didn't have the thorny brambles to contend with. That was a plus.

Picking blueberries is a little more tedious picking than picking raspberries or blackberries but a lot less back breaking than picking strawberries. If the blueberries are really good and ripe you can comb them off the branches by bunches into your berry bucket or just shake them off and let them fall, ping, ping, tap, tap, tap into whatever you plan to carry them home in. Of course doing it this way, you have to winnow out all the leaves and twigs that fall into your berry bucket as well. However, picking them one at a time can take the better part of a day to get a decent harvest and it gets pretty boring unless you have company.

I was alone, or at least I thought I was and my mind was on a slice of homemade blueberry pie topped off with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream so I kept right on picking, not paying a whole lot of attention to my surroundings. I knew the area well. I'd spent almost every summer weekend there since I was a young child. My family and I had come out here picking blueberries most every summer until I had grown up and was out on my own.

Now I grew up country and growing up as I did, I heard lots of family tales, folk lore and a few of them were about berrying, blueberrying and black bears. I never really took a whole lot of stock in those stories but I did enjoy hearing them.

I'd only seen a couple of bear in my life, in the wild, once on route 35 between Chester and Grafton. It crossed the road in front of us one night on our way home from my aunt's and uncle's house. It was late evening, just really starting to get dark. The bear was crossing the road to the brook. We stopped. He crossed the road and paid us no mind at all.

The one other time was on the road between Wallingford and East Wallingford. We watched this bear for several minutes before we were able to go on our way and we stayed safely within the confines of our car. This was in the spring of the year and a mother bear and two cubs decided to cross the road about the same time we came around a sharp bend. We came to a screeching halt.

The bear stopped also, right in the middle of the road. There was no way around her so we had no choice but to wait for her to move. She was in no hurry to get out of the way. Instead, she stood there looking back in the direction from which she had come. She made a sort of grunting sound and shortly thereafter two cubs came scrambling up the bank and into the road. Mother bear directed them across, all the while seemingly enjoying playing "crossing guard" and stopping traffic. One cub went across the road obediently and scampered up a tree.

The other cub took a little more coaxing but eventually crossed too and then the mother bear moved along to the other side of the road. We watched her as she handled her cubs and soon they disappeared into the woods and out of our sight.
We told the story about the mother bear and cubs over many a Sunday dinner after that.

My folks and grandfolks told us other bear stories as well. We heard stories about bear crossing the cow pasture and about a bear following my aunt home from school one late afternoon. My grandmother, my aunt, my dad and even a neighbor or two told tales about going berrying, especially blueberrying and seeing the black bear berrying too but not once in all my years growing up had I seen a bear while picking blueberries or any other kind. I figured I never would since the bear was probably more afraid of me than I am of him. I've never heard of anyone out berrying who ever got eaten by a bear, not around here anyhow.

Bears are near sighted and if it is not a rogue bear and you don't make any sudden movements to alarm the bear, do nothing to attract its attention, irritate it, the bear will go about its own business and eventually go away. If possible just stay downwind and the bear will probably never even know you are there. Never run from a bear. Bears enjoy a good chase so I am told and you probably can't out run one anyhow so don't even try.
Anyhow, back to my own little adventure, I had been hearing berrying and bear stories for years but I had always believed they were more or less exaggerated, just a tad, if not purely fiction. Here I was, an adult now, married and with children of my own. I'd been berrying every summer and not once been confronted by a bear, not even a glimpse of one.

My children were spending the weekend with their grandparents so my husband and I decided to go to Tinmouth, do a little fishing, maybe hike around the lake, have a picnic, enjoy a "just the two of us" day. It seemed like a plan. He'd never been to Chipman Lake and I wanted to show him the fun place I'd grown up in, where I'd spent many a wonderful weekend and summer vacation. We left Windsor about nine o'clock and stopped in Wallingford to pick up deli food for our picnic and stuff to drink.

While we were there my husband ran into a couple of friends he hadn't seen in awhile who were members of the same organization he belonged to. They chatted and before long the other two men decided to follow along and do a little fishing too. My husband seemed delighted. I wasn't. I didn't even really know them. So much for our "just the two of us" day.

We arrived at the lake and we all visited and fished for awhile. The men chatted and joked and were having a good time. I was feeling more than a little left out and a tad put out and no one, not even my husband, seemed to care.

I finally said I was going to walk to the other side of the lake and see if the blueberries were ripe. I'd be back in a couple or three hours.

They gave me a nod and one of the men told me to be careful, black bear had been seen in the area recently.

"No kidding," I thought, "It's not like I don't know that. I grew up around here. We heard bears all the time and no bear ever bothered any of us. We never even saw them." I figured he was just trying to spook me, after all, I'm just a girl.
I gave him my best "Oh yeh, right," look and my husband and his other friend laughed. I don't think my husband actually believed him either.

With a smirk, a toss of my head and some rather deliberately snappy footsteps, I left the three of them to their fishing. I grabbed the small water pail we always kept handy near our campfire and I went walking.
It took me probably twenty minutes to a half hour to get to where the blueberries grow so abundantly and they were perfectly ripe and just waiting to be picked. I began picking them by the handfuls, my mind wandering here and there and on nothing in particular, just enjoying the peacefulness of the area and picking berries. It didn't bother me at all that I was out there all alone. I'd done this hundreds of times.

The pail was probably just a little over half full when I decided I should probably head back to the lake so to be back when I said I would be and before the berries in the bottom of the pail turned to jam.

I was just about ready to leave when I heard a sort of grunting sound. I listened. I heard it again. I smiled to myself and I ignored it.

I figured the three men had decided to follow me and try to scare me. You know, Big, Bad, Bear. Right! I wasn't about to let them pull that one on me. No way. They'd already spoiled my "just the two of us" day and they were not going to spoil the fun I was having picking blueberries. I'd show them. I wouldn't even flinch. I'd just stay right there and keep picking.

I had just moved around the side of a large berry bush and WHOA! Oops! My berry pail went flying one way and I went flying the other. I had come almost face to face with a black bear. Oh yes, black bears do love blueberries and Mr. Bear was berrying too.

I probably made it back to the lake in less than half the time it took me to get to the blueberry field but as soon as the men were in sight I slowed to a steady walk.

I hadn't stopped once or turned around or even dared glance behind me on my way back to where I'd left my husband and his two friends fishing. "Don't run," I kept reminding myself, "just keep walking away."

Well, if I wasn't running, I was sure setting a new world's record for speed walking. No grass was growing under my feet. If this was my day to die, I didn't want to see it coming.

"Hey, I'm back," I yelled. All three men were staring in my direction, not so much at me as beyond me. I stopped and turned around. There was the black bear watching us and slowly moving along the edge of the wood line. It had followed me. He hadn't growled. It hadn't threatened me, not that I was aware of. It had just followed me. After a few minutes the bear turned and disappeared into the woods.

"Berries aren't quite ripe." I lied. "They will probably be perfect in another three or four days if the weather holds." I tried to sound non-chalaunt as I approached the men by the lake. I knew I was probably a whiter shade of pale but I wasn't about to admit to them that I had just had the living daylight scared out of me.

I glanced at my watch. "Maybe we should get going," I said. "It's a long drive back home again and I'd like to stop in Rutland and do a little shopping."

My husband reeled in his line. He'd already caught six or eight good sized perch while I was gone. He dressed them out and put them on ice. They'd make a nice dinner for the two of us when we got home.

"Too bad the berries weren't ripe," he grinned. "These fish would go real good with some potato salad and topped off with a nice slice of your blueberry pie."

I glared at him, glanced toward the wood line and got in the car.

"Sorry," was all he said as he slid behind the driver's wheel. He didn't mention the bears or the berries all the way home but I did notice he bought a new water pail while we were shopping.

Black bear love blueberries and fortunately my husband loved me enough not to completely ruin my day by teasing me, well, not too badly anyhow.

Back home, we put my husband's catch in the freezer, showered, changed into fresh clothes and went out to dinner. We went to a really nice Steak House, had a wonderful meal and really talked, shared, more than we had in months. It was a good feeling.

There was no doubt that we still loved each other, but things had been a bit rocky for a time and we didn't always like each other. Maybe that was more a lack of real communication, not making time for each other, listening but not really hearing what the other was saying, putting our lives as a couple on the back burner. Our lives had grown just to busy and the romance had all but disappeared.

Anyhow, it turned out we did have our "just the two of us" time after all. After dinner we went to a movie and then for coffee and dessert. You guessed it. He ordered BLUE berry pie. That's okay. I did him one better. I ordered blackberry ice cream. Where did we go...The Black Bear Cafe. Back home again...Well, it was "just the two of us".

We've had a few laughs over that day since then, but if truth be known, we are both lucky we lived to tell about it.