Me and the 3 Bears...and Other Northern Tales

It is officially my second summer in The North and I am so excited that it’s here! The days are generally warm and sunny so there is no excuse not to get out and enjoy life. Of course we take the dogs for their daily walks, and lately we’ve been seeing signs that someone else is trodding the trail as well.

  
Signs of a bear’s presence always give me a little shiver, but I doubt that he (or she) would be out in the afternoon when we are, and would probably run away at the sound of me and the dogs anyway. Still, it makes me look into the woods ever so often and wonder about the odd black shadow or the snapping of a twig. So far, though, the sight or sound has only ever turned out to be one of the dogs. Phew.

This weekend my partner and I took the opportunity to go quadding to seek out any trails outside of town. We didn’t have much luck, but we did a lot of exploring, including dropping by the Zoo (a.k.a. the dump) to see if any of the bears were hanging out for the day.

 

We were not disappointed; in fact, I was a little unnerved to see two large heads pop up from amidst the scattered rubbish in front of us and then a smaller head to the side. The above picture shows the two adult bears; they are the black blobs in the middle there. The cub was not a newborn, but likely around one year old. He was curious about our presence and sauntered directly over to us. A few revs of an engine kept him from coming right to us and he wandered away a few metres.

I was vigilant in keeping an eye on the adults but they didn’t even seem to care about our presence, let alone that their cub was near enough to us that we could have snatched him up and driven wildly away. See, the bears are so used to people coming and going that they don’t consider us more than part of the scenery. While we were there a guy rolled in with a load of garbage, backed up the truck right beside the bears and got out to unload. Right there. Beside the bears. They didn’t even look at him, although one trudged away a little and plopped down to continue licking the pungent insides of a can of Folgers. Nothing’s going to keep a Northern Black Bear away from his morning coffee, I guess. 

 

In other news, for all of you who didn’t know, last Thursday the 21^st of June was National Aboriginal Day. This lil’ town whooped it up with events going on all day including dance and trapper competitions, a band, a community meal and a dance. I attended some of the festivities (including the meal, of course!) and was lucky enough to enjoy a brief pow-wow. The dancers were few but they were happy to be out in the sun for all to see. It’s a rare glimpse into what once was, especially at a time when tradition seems to be eroding at an alarming rate. People were laughing and having fun as a community, enjoying the beautiful outdoors. If only every day were Aboriginal Day. 

 

Of course since it’s summer we’ve been having some campfires in the backyard. As a follow-up to my last post, Reina’s birthday/Summer Solstice celebrations went very well. I made some treats for the occasion for Reina and her friends. We invited a bunch of people over to enjoy the campfire, and four of those folks happen to be the proud owners of Nanuq’s siblings. We therefore had not one, two, three or even four white doggies but FIVE running around the yard and driving Reina crazy (plus 1 black dog...that's 7 dogs in total, pure chaos!). They got to be such a nuisance that we threw them in the neighbour’s yard to run and frolic at will. Here’s a blurry pic of her looking miserable from the other side of the fence.

 

The pups all enjoyed the treats which conveniently made use of some excess parsley I had and some leftover carrots. I found the recipe online and cut them with my trusty bone-shaped cutters. You can find out how to make them here.

 

The best thing about this time of year is that the entire summer is yet to come!