As I drove in the morning toward the Book Cliffs, I passed through the flat bottom of the Grand Valley, which held an expanse of sagebrush and greasewood. None of the vegetation was more than three feet tall. It was an open landscape aside from patches of hills and natural gas pipelines. I drove slowly up the road both to watch for plants and to avoid raising dust.
In the distance ahead of me, I saw something—a person, I thought, lumbering along the side of the road in a brown coat. His walk was uneven. Is this a person I want to encounter in this isolated place?—I wondered. I was miles from any house or town. What kind of person would be deranged or desperate enough to wear a heavy coat in this heat? And he was clearly unsteady and slow on his feet.
I drove slowly toward the person and began to realize the person was nearer than I had thought—and this meant smaller than I had thought. Perhaps my person was really a cow--although if a cow, he would have had wide hips.
Finally, I stopped to look through binoculars. I focused on the very brown butt of a bear. It was three feet high at the haunches and had a smooth, thick coat. The bear continued to walk up the road as I watched. I started the truck and followed, stopping a couple more times to look through my binoculars.
When I was about 30 yards behind it, the bear stepped off the road into the sagebrush. It took a few more steps, then turned around, and stood up. I watched through binoculars, seeing the bear’s triangular face and dark eyes. After its look at me, the bear was quickly down and turned around. It ran through the sagebrush. Fast and even.
The spine of the bear showed like a fin above the plane of shrub tops. His back moved neither up nor down, nor wobbled from side to side; the bear went straight, a brown line through the green shrubs. He headed toward a canyon opening in the Book Cliffs, and so did I.
Comments