The Bear In The Road, The Bear In The River, And Lots And Lots Of Licks And Naked People--

I took the back way into town to pick up my repaired computer, and thought I was coming upon a large black dog in the middle of the road (coincidentally, this was very near the spot I found my young rugrat dog Waldo). As I slowed to allow the big furry dog to run off to the side of the road, I remarked to myself (nobody in the car with me) how he looked just like a dog of long ago- a big, monstrous Newfoundland Rottweiler monster-dog.

He turned out to be a bear.

I pulled up next to him and began telling him how he was close to the California border, and how California was where all the nuts were, and this seemed to intrigue him enough to pause and give thought to what I was saying. Meanwhile, I was fishing with my right hand down on the floor of the truck, grabbing my camera and setting it up to shoot some shots.

"Nuts?" I imagined him saying. "In California?"

I got these pictures before he decided I was lying about the nuts, whereby he turned and did a bear-like skedaddle right up the side of a steep and forested hillside.

It reminded me of a dog, and a story, from long ago.

A friend of mine and I took a beat up old inflatable Tahiti on a four day kayaking trip down the Eel river in the early summertime. What this meant was that the river was mostly wide and shallow, and walking in wet tennis shoes and dragging the rubber kayak was more the norm than the exception.

Every now and then, we would come upon a bear drinking along the riverbank, and it would skedaddle up the embankments, and leave us be.

Bear skat was all over the place, but the black bears like this one seemed to be more afraid of us than the other way around.

On day four, nearing civilization once again, we came around a bend in the river (blissfully being swept down stream by a current) and there was one of these bears standing in the middle of the river, staring up at us, not budging while we floated down straight for it.

The current was like a conveyor belt, leading us right into the bear's evil darkness, and no amount of back paddling was going to save us.

"Crap!" I thought. "The river is going to feed us to a bear."

And as suddenly as I thought my life was over, naked hairy hippy people began standing and walking toward us. They were like furry and hairy angels, or fuzzy and curly zombies, or naked and smelly hippies, all standing and walking toward my friend and I, while the bear stood its ground in the middle of the river.

As my near-sightedness cleared, the bear became a giant dog, belonging to a bunch of communal hippies who lived and worked nearby.

The fear of being mauled and eaten by a bear was replaced by lots of nudity and licking.