Bear

 

The blueberries are ripe so I expect we'll see signs of our old friend, Bear, soon - that is, if the birds leave enough berries for us and Bear to share. The birds have been exceptionally busy in the garden, and I wish they'd pay more attention to slugs and bugs than to cherries and berries, but they don't pay me much mind when I'm shouting this at them.

Bear first arrived many years ago; one morning we glanced out the window towards the garden, and there she was - young, but huge, and in the compost. "Bear in the compost!" someone shouted, and we all crowded to the windows to look. As she sensed our interest and lumbered off toward the woods, out of my doors burst all the male creatures currently in residence: the Husband, the Cellar Dweller, and the visiting friends, leaving me to restrain the First Hound from exiting through one of the windows after them.

The four dudes rushed to the compost, raced around it, then took off through the garden in several directions towards the woods, looking exactly like a pack of dogs hot on the scent of something wonderful. Once they reached the woodline they thought better of it and came back to the house, panting with excitement. 

Ever since that first sighting, the people in my tribe have had an unusual number of bears in their lives.

Brother kept bees until a bear discovered the hives and began indulging – which destroys the hives, since bears don't have opposable thumbs enabling them to delicately remove the honey. After a few rounds, Brother put an electric fence around his hives to discourage bear brunching. That just pissed the bear off, so it started patrolling Brother's yard, looking for an opportunity to discuss the matter and reach a reasonable compromise. For several weeks Brother escorted his family to and from their cars with a shotgun slung across his back. Eventually the bear gave up, because Brother removed the hives.  

I've often seen a bear on the periphery of Brother's place, and one day I was gazing out his big front window towards the little brook that runs under the trees. There's a very large rock on the edge of the brook, and I was lazily contemplating how nice it might be to lie on the flat top of that moss-covered rock, in the sun-dappled shade, the little brook bubbling just below, and read a book or take a summer nap, when I realized that someone who'd been lying out on the rock had just stood up to full height and was staring back at me. 

"That's just not right," I thought, peering intensely at the spot. "Who on earth---" and then the bear had had enough of our silent conversation, set down onto four paws, and ambled out of sight. I'm full of wonder that my gaze from behind a closed window across a driveway and through a patch of trees could alert the bear that something other was focusing attention in its direction. 

For years the Tall Dude slept on a screened porch on the end of his barn-like structure. In winter the screens were replaced with plastic, and with down-filled comforters, a sub-zero sleeping bag, and a snug wooly hat, it was also his winter bedroom. The clothesline that stretched from porch wall to tall tree became a bird-feeder line, and the birdseed slept at the foot of his bed in a metal can. This airy bedroom was almost like being in a tree-house; that end of the porch floor was on stilts about 12 feet off the ground. 

One late winter when he was away he asked me to stop by to fill his feeders. My coming and going was the only activity out there, and one day the feeders were gone when I arrived to fill them. How the heck did something get those high feeders down? No idea. When the Tall Dude returned home, he walked down the still-snowy incline to explore the situation, and was alarmed to find bear claw marks on the wall of his porch, not far below the plastic-covered windows, and bear hind-foot prints still visible in the rotting snow at the foot of the wall. He started to calculate how tall this bear actually was, standing on hind feet and trying to reach the seed bins, then decided he didn't need to know and that the bins would be just as convenient stored in the well-enclosed center of the building.

One summer the Husband and the First Hound were taking a stroll 'round the dirt road that winds through out-back neighbor Eddie B.'s place and on up the hill to Elkins, when they accidentally stepped between Bear, who had crossed the road ahead of them, and her cubs, who were still in the bushes on the other side. Neither Husband nor the fairly aged Hound had any idea what they'd done, until Husband heard something pounding on the road behind them and looked back to discover Bear running after them. He started running and urging First Hound to run, too, but Hound really wanted to stop and greet the great big dog who his failing eyesight had detected was following them. A lot of shouting ensued, as Husband and Hound ran to Eddie B's barn to take shelter and discovered Bear had stopped chasing them. That close encounter with Bear was entirely too close.

Late one dark night in an early spring, I noticed the cat people slinking around the house very fluffed up, headed for the dining room window. The barkie boys were sound asleep, snoring away, so I crept behind the cats and peered out the window with them, onto the deck. It was unusually dark, but the cats were intently watching something I couldn't see. Suddenly, I realized the darkness was moving! 

I reached over and flipped on the porch light; and still all I could see was moving darkness; but in a moment, the darkness moved again, and four feet in front of me appeared a face. Bear had emerged early from hibernation, and was having a snack off the deck railings, where I feed the winter birds.

We looked at each other for a bit; me thinking, "Whoa, there's only a pane of glass between me and that large being, and I hope she doesn't smell the cat food on the kitchen counter behind me." At the same time, Bear was thinking --- actually, I don't know what.  Probably something about turning that darned porch light off.  We stared for a moment, she turned and lumbered down the stairs, then stood on hind feet and continued her snack.

I flipped the porch light off and locked the door, and the cats and I quietly, quietly, quietly snuck back through the house and upstairs to bed. I shut the door at the bottom of the stairs, just because.

That winter I'd kept the birdseed in a big plastic bin outside the kitchen door on the deck. It had a tight-fitting cover, and inside was a mug from NHPR, which I used to scoop seed. In the morning, the bin was gone. We found the bin cover, half-way across the field. We found the empty bin in the woods, on the far side of our swampy brook. But we never found the mug, though we hunted all over the area.

I'm pretty sure Bear took it home to hold her morning coffee.

Originally published in shorter form, in the Concord Monitor, August 18, 2016, as "The Bear Chronicles."

True Ghost Story

Photo copyright Clare McCarthy 2016

This is a true ghost story.

When I was a teen, I knew the folks who lived in the old Colonial on the way to town. It has a name, but let's let it be nameless; suffice to say it’s on a hill and was built around the time of the Civil War.

The family had lived in exotic places all over the world, but eventually mom and the kids settled in New England, where she kept horses, a small garden, a menagerie of Irish Wolfhounds, Cairn Terriers, Siamese cats and cats without a lineage - and her many children - in line. 

In the dark ages when this story took place, there was no such thing as a cell phone – the (usually sole) phone was attached firmly to a wall somewhere in the house. This house’s phone was in the kitchen, where most phones in that era lived.

The house had a wide center hall with doors to all the rooms opening into it. The stairs to the second floor landed in the hall next to the living room door.  In the kitchen was a massive fireplace, with an iron crane for hanging a pot, a baking oven, and a large hearth where the critters hung out on the huge, warm, granite hearthstone. A giant window spanned one wall, and the fireplace and hearth took up most of another. Between the window wall and the fireplace wall was the open doorway to a tiny mud room, which was also the shortcut to the living room. Everyone went in and out through the mudroom – its door out to the yard was the only door kept cleared in winter.  

Most of the rooms were dusty and unused, except the cozy kitchen with its big fireplace and table, and the living room, with its comfy seats, warm fireplace, and television. 

Bedrooms and a bathroom occupied the second floor; the third floor was all attic, where could be seen the huge beams that formed the skeleton of the house. The mom took me up one day to admire the beams and look out the attic windows at the hills across the fields above the tree tops. She pointed out the date, 1863, and initials of the original owner of the house, and those of his eldest son, carved into one of the massive support beams.

 Shortly after helping his father build the house, the son went off to fight in the war, and died.  The father was said to be a little strange, either made so by the loss of his son, or maybe he was always a bit odd. He had put Indian Shutters in all the windows on the first floor. These solid interior shutters slide into the wall when not in use, and when pulled shut completely block the window opening. 

Local lore included many rumors about these shutters; neighbors spoke of seeing lights moving about in the upstairs windows late at night, and brief glimmers in the downstairs, and hearing strange noises. It was believed the man was a --- FreeMason!! ---who hosted mystical meetings with secret goings-on, and kept the shutters closed against prying eyes.

All old houses have at least one mystery, and this house had another. The mom sometimes asked me to stay there to care for the critters when she and her kids were away. "Don't bring anything yellow with you," she warned me. "It doesn't matter what it is: shirt, socks, skirt, pillow case - it will disappear. Our ghost will steal it and you'll never get it back.”

Ghost? Ghost? First I'd heard about that. "Oh, come on…" I said. "I'm serious," she answered. "I used to think it was the kids playing tricks. But I've searched every nook and cranny all over the house and barns. I’d have found them out eventually. We've lost all kinds of clothes, and linens and towels and napkins and even a set of curtains. Gone, usually within a day or two. We think it's the son who never came back from the war - not alive, anyway. I don't know if he really likes yellow or really hates it."

I asked the son if his mother was pulling my leg. "Oh, no," he said, "it's true. I've helped look for those things. It's the ghost, for sure. Don't be alarmed if you hear him at night," he continued. "We've all heard him coming down the stairs from the attic. He checks out all the bedrooms, sometimes goes downstairs. We never see him, we just hear him. He's harmless."

Ooookay. I thought twice, but decided to stay, and experienced no ghostly thefts or sightings. I stayed several times, in fact - no ghost. I didn't believe in it.

One dark night in December, with snow lightly falling and several snowstorms' worth piled up in high banks along the roads, I was spending the evening. The son had earlier left Mom at a party several towns away. We were watching a good movie. The Indian Shutters were closed for extra draft control, and the critters were all in the kitchen lounging on the hearth, basking in the heat of the embers of a fire. 11:30 pm - time to fetch Mom home.

"I'm staying here," I said. "It’s cozy and I want to see the end of the movie."(Yes, this predated streaming movies and recording devices. Dark ages, remember?)

"Okay," the son said. "We should be back in an hour or so. I won't bank the fires, so don’t leave until we get back."

Out into the cold and snow he went, and I returned my attention to the movie. It was warm and quiet, the house lit only by the glow of the tv screen and a faint glow from the fireplaces. I got dozy. Suddenly, the critters trooped in from the kitchen.  One by one they climbed up on the couch with me: two cats on the back of the sofa by my head, two Wolfhounds leaning against me on either side, a Cairn Terrier sitting on my feet, and two more cats in my lap. They all stared intently back towards the kitchen.

"What's up, guys?" I said out loud. Then I heard it - to my left, footsteps descending the stairway to the dark hall; footsteps walking down the hall to the kitchen; the kitchen door opening and closing; footsteps moving into the kitchen… and then all the kitchen lights blazed on.

Now we were all staring intently at the doorway to the mudroom - the only way out - and I was hanging tightly onto the dogs and trying to see, and not wanting to see, through the mudroom into the kitchen, where the phone - and the ghost - were.

One at a time, the kitchen cupboard doors opened and shut, opened and shut, coming closer and closer to the door of the mudroom – and the door of my room. The fire in the kitchen fireplace flared; the fire in my room flared. I held my breath. The critters were very still and very quiet. A hesitation: then back again, opening and shutting, opening and shutting, moving away towards the door to the hall. The steps reached the door: the lights went out. Then step, step, step through the hall, approaching the stairs and the open door to the room I was in. Still holding my breath; all critter heads swiveled to look toward the hall. No living creature moved; I considered whether I should run, barefoot, out into the cold, snowy night while I could. 

The footsteps stopped, just outside the door to my room. A log fell. I could feel the hesitation – then, slowly, the steps climbed the stairs. In a moment, the house was silent again, except for the murmur of the tv. The critters got off the couch and filed back into the kitchen. I took a quiet breath and wondered whether the ghost was going to come back to watch tv with me.

I have no idea how the movie ended.

Originally published in the Concord Monitor, October 26, 2016, as "A Ghost Story."

Hay bale Hallowe’en cat, Rt 4, Northwood, NH, 2016. Photo by Charley Freiberg, c 2016

One Thousand Letters

I just turned one of those awkward ages, when you feel like not enough's been accomplished and there's an awful lot to do in what could be a relatively short time. I go through this psychic angst every 5 or 10 years or so, and find that the only cure is to reorganize, re-evaluate, do something. Sometimes all it takes is a re-organization of the pantry, or collecting all the stuff that I've mentally set aside for a yard sale and then actually have one.  This time I decided to hoe out the storage bins.
 
The storage bins are literally that: a triplet of plastic bins and a wooden box and several filing cabinets full of stuff I've saved for - well, decades, as it turns out. Into these have gone every possible thing I thought I might be sentimental about in my dotage, or that my adoring fans and future biographers would be eager to discover after my (still pending) rise to fame. In a sentence, pretty much every scrap of paper I've ever written or doodled on, or, in later years, printed out.
 
The first thing that got tackled was the easiest: time to dump all those mouldering files of notes for articles I wrote 30 years ago; pretty sure no one will care about those, even my future biographer. Second: the multiple copies of all the old articles I wrote 30 years ago, especially the ones on (now defunct) computer technology for (now defunct) computer magazines. Into the recycle bin, don't look back! Save one copy for old times' sake.

That cleared one filing cabinet, and thus far the process was painless and was starting to feel pretty good. Next I tackled that pile of old magazines, saved because there was something special about them. This, too, was an easy toss into the recycle bin: not hard, nowadays, to buy a magazine or newspaper in a foreign language, organic farming practices have either evolved or are no longer difficult to find literature on, and the mildew skinning these old copies might be organic, but definitely was not healthy. And what on earth did I save all these other magazines for? No idea. Poof! One good toss and the contents of that  filing cabinet were history. Note to self: the cellar needs a dehumidifier. 

Feeling pretty good now - look at all the effort I just saved my niece, who won't have to sort through that recycled mess after my demise! Next on my list: the plastic bins and wooden box.
And this is where I got lost.
 
One plastic bin was from the days of my youth: notebooks full of childhood poems and stories - set that aside to take a tour through later; old school essays - recycle bin; grammar school "literature magazines"- another easy toss; and set aside the large bundle of tied-up-in-ribbon letters from schooldays friends to look at when this project is finished. Next bin: oh! This bin is also full of letters, from college friends  and friends at college, and from family to this homesick college girl. The wooden box turns out to be yet another repository of dozens of letters from friends and family received during the early years of my marriage. Third bin: once again, nothing but bundles of letters.
 
Literally hundreds of letters, most of them several pages long, written mostly by hand, some in beautiful script, some in childish scrawl (usually with crayon drawings to go along), some printed, some nearly impossible to read. Some are in pencil, some in ink, some written on the backs of calendar pages, on lined tablet paper, on lovely note paper, on cards, on paper napkins, on air-mail paper, on postcards, on hand-made paper. Business stationary from both my beloved, but long-dead grandfathers; a note my father wrote on hospital stationary when he was having a back operation and I was a little girl, reassuring me he'd be home soon. Letters from grade school pen pals, from summer friends who lived in other states in the winter, from my first (10-year-old) boyfriend, from high school and college boyfriends, from my best high-school friend describing her amazing bike rides to school and the plays she'd been to London to see during the semester she spent in England, and years later, describing her struggle with anorexia and her escape from a controlling boyfriend. There are letters from my French-Canadian grandmother talking about her bus trips to various cities, and from my next-door grandmother reporting on the progress of the garden, her canning, the needlepoint or hooked rug she was working on, what she and Gramp had for dinner, the weekly trip to the dump. Letters from my mother encouraging me to do something besides study when I was down in the dumps in school; from a long-time boyfriend after he graduated from college and I moved to another college several states away. Letters from high school friends who came out as gay in college and how they were received; from a trans college friend who was transitioning after I changed colleges; from my nieces' au pairs after they returned to Europe, from my students who moved to Europe, from a friend who thought we'd be surprised to hear he'd moved to Japan instead of to Colorado. There are letters from friends before, during, and after difficult marriages, and from friends of friends with whom I shared interests in music or literature or t'ai chi.

 
All these letters, as I looked at them again, some of them a lifetime later, brought me back into each writer's life so strongly it sometimes took my breath away. For much of the time when these letters were written, we didn't have much money, and long-distance phone calls were an expensive treat we couldn't often indulge in.

We'd write to each other, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, sometimes daily, eagerly answering a letter received within hours. Work would stop; we'd pour out our passions or heartbreak to each other, or share the homely things that we each would be doing in our own separate places: how many quarts of tomato juice we'd canned, how many packages of beans frozen, how many pints of berries picked, and are your peas up yet, ours are 4 inches high already! 

They tell of baking bread, of walking dogs, of the fox we saw with a mouse in its mouth, of the snapping turtle laying her eggs in the rock garden, of the story we wrote and sent with fingers crossed to a publisher, of music discovered that caused the spirit to soar, of long train trips across the country, of lost loves and new loves, of where our minds wandered when we were still awake in our workspaces after midnight. Sometimes a letter would come with a photo enclosed, or a drawing, or a child's story, or a pressed flower. Sometimes the envelope would be adorned with hand-drawn art or an especially lovely stamp. The air mail letters are on thin blue paper that cleverly folded, origami-like, to become its own envelope which needed to be carefully sliced open with a knife once received.
 
From recent years there are fewer letters. I wish I could say that email has become the new post - but not so, not in my experience anyway. A long email as often as not elicits a short response, or none at all, or a response not full of story about the respondent's life and loves, but full, instead, of links to funny videos or cartoons; and I doubt many of this kind of correspondence are printed out and saved for decades, as my stash of letters have been. I think that the speed and ever-present ability to make contact that the internet brought us, has also caused us to rob ourselves of a richness in our communications that kept us close, and deeply a part of, each others' internal and external lives.
 
One precious letter I have is from my grandmother's grandmother, treasured and saved and passed on for more than 140 years, describing an amazing day in the 19th century. This letter has been read and wondered over by four generations, and I'm about to pass it on to the fifth and sixth generation. This one letter - four smallish sheets of paper, written on front and back, by itself tells me so much about my great great grandmother's life as a young wife and mother that I couldn't have possibly known any other way; it's a history lesson as well as a window into an ancestor who I've only met through my grandmother's stories about her grandmother. As I re-read it, after many years, I realized that my niece would have trouble reading the beautiful script - her generation pretty much sees only printed text, rarely anything written by hand more complicated than a grocery list; and my great-niece, now only 4, may never be able to read the letter except in the transcript I've made for her.
 
I wonder whether there will be anything I've written so precious as to be delicately unfolded and read, and reread, for more than a century? And I wonder whether the next generations will ever be left with the treasure I've got - me, a person whose rise to fame is still pending, who owns a richness stored in plastic bins, of the thoughts and longings and passions and anguish and day-to-day life and soul-searching recordings of the lives of so many other people, whose elevations to fame are also still pending?

Originally published in the Concord Monitor, June 22, 2016, as "A Life In Boxes."

People have asked me about the very old letter I referred to in the article – here ‘tis, and an explanation follows.

Letter to Miss Flora J. Nelson, East Hardwick, Vermont; postmark obscured, but Feb 20 VT can be read. This letter was written in pencil on folded, lined paper. The letter is from Abigail Webster Colby. The Ralph she refers to is her son; GR would be her first husband, George, who died in Concord not many years later, crushed between two rail cars – he worked for the railroad.
The transcription was made by Abigail’s great, great granddaughter in January, 2016, without corrections. Unreadable words are shown by [?] in the transcription. I don’t know who Flora was, nor how Abigail came to have the letter back in her possession.
Upside down on the first page, above the date:

Behold how large a letter I have written to you with mine own hand. Perhaps they would not be so tiresome if I wrote shorter ones and oftener.
Weare Aug 14th 1881
My never forgotten though greatly neglected friend Flora
Have you forever erased my name from the tablet of your memory If so I crave your forgiveness for my sin of omission and beg you will once more try me and see if I will not do a little better Where are you and what are you doing
I shall direct this to E.H., not-knowing whether or no you are at Woodstock. If it be not too late accept my heart-felt congratulations
I think you may well be proud of your certificate  Deary me how I want to see you. We are all well G.R. and myself at present  Ralph was quite sick last week  Doctor said it was caused by worms. He is a big two year old boy now chatters like a black bird and dodges from one juice of mischief to another like a veritable will o wisp. I often wonder what I should do if I had two or three as near of an age as some do. He has got now where he trys to say every thing and makes some curious mistakes
He says “shoo fly boddie me, I’ll [?] wind”  He went out with me berrying and saw a grasshopper said, Mama, drasshopper open leef see Ralph. Oh we have had such terrible hot weather and such thunder showers I never witnessed before and have no desire to again  One commenced at four oclock one afternoon and it never ceased till after four the next morn  It was one continual roar and blaze ever so many buildings were burned in this town and the adjoining ones  I suppose of course you have seen the comets  I think if any one is inclined to be very superstitious that this year would be trying to their nerves. Not long ago one morning, about four Oclock we were astonished by one peal of thunder and one single flash of lightning but that set fire to a set of buildings not far from here and burned them to the ground
Tuesday Sept 6th
I dropped my pencil after writing of one phenomena and I take it again to write of another  It has been a frightful day here  I should like to know if you have witnessed the like. It has been a veritable dark day  I don’t know what time the darkness began but at four this morning it was so intensely dark that as I lay in bed I was unable to see a window or any thing else in the room but gradually it grew lighter and when we sat down to breakfast at six we were able to eat without a light but I never saw such a sight the whole heavens turned to gold  The grass and leaves were a dark green almost a black and clothes spread upon the grass looked as though they had been dipped in saffron dye  I washed this fore noon with my tub directly in front of a window and then could hardly discern the clean clothes from the dirty  At noon I really thought we should be obliged to have a light and it has been worse since then  At half past one it was frightful over head burned one sheet of blaze  Our countenances assumed a blood red hue  Some of the chickens went to roost and those that did not groped about with their heads close to the ground  The crickets chirped as loud as they do on a summer evening  Taken all in all it was the most awe inspiring scene I ever witnessed  I felt like exclaiming “How wonderful are Thy works O Lord”  At present writing (four oclock) it seems a good deal lighter and as I look off at a distance it seems very smoky  It seems as though there must be large fires raging some where  I can account for it in no other way  Did you know you left your corset cover at my house  You never have written of it  Tell me what I shall do with it send it to you or keep it till I see you  When think you that will be  Didn’t you promise to send me your picture  If my memory holds good you did  And I am quite anxious to hear of those two love lorn swain  Which is which as all neither of them whicher  I expect by this time you have one of the Woodstock males on the string  Such is life  I will send you a card Carlton gave [?] two  You perceive Carlton has at last got a job on the railroad but it is on the same train his father is conductor on so he boards at home and I imagine misses some of the fun he anticipated for all that he told you he was “no such a fellow as that,  Did you give Mrs Carter Ralphs picture and what did she say
I have thought and dreamed of her a great deal lately and am going to write to her very soon  I don’t hardly know where to address but I believe South Craftsbury is her address
Sept 16th Shall I ever get this letter finished and mailed  Echo answers Yea horse
I am going to bite it off right here hoping you will forgive my negligence and answer directly  Now don’t wait it seems an age since I heard from you   With untold love I remain yours forever  Abbie

My Internet research finds this information: Sept 6, 1881 was called “The Yellow Day”; a mist-like yellowness turned the sky as far east as the New Jersey shore and as far north as the Canadian border very dark all that day, and colors to shine oddly and intensely yellow. There was a massive forest fire in Michigan (called the “Thumb Fire,” referring to the area it was located in) which burned millions of acres, covered 4 counties, and killed at least 282 people. On the 6th the smoke from this fire was blown east and caused the strange darkness and color intensity. It was so dark many businesses and schools had to close because it was too dark to work indoors.
1881 had been an odd year: in July, a comet was visible; in April, a rare celestial event lined up the Earth with Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune; and in addition, many people were aware that in the 16th century, a prophet called Mother Shipton had prophesied that the world would come to an end in 1881. After all the other strange events of the year, when the world went dark on Sept. 6 and there was not an eclipse to explain it, many people decided the end of the world had arrived. Up on the roofs, waiting for the heavens to open and take them in.