Notes From A Bear's Journey

    It happened again, my laptop somehow crashing in the middle of an update (you know those warnings from Windows to "not turn off your computer" while it updates, which is great unless your computer decides to shut itself down); anyway a lot disappeared once again.  And yes, I did have backups from several sites so photos and documents and such were all "saved" but enough was lost to have Google print out an entire 12-pt., single-space sheet of paper of those "apps" and programs that had vanished: Visual C, Chrome, Acrobat, Acronis, Mozilla, Norton, Western Digital, Sticky Notes, bookmarks, and on it went.  But as I reloaded what I could, I realized that trying to recapture what I had lost was a bit like mentally rebuilding an inventory of your possessions after a house fire...what books were on the shelves, what papers where in the desk, what was in those file cabinets, what hung on the walls, what clothes were there?  Soon I took it a step farther and

   The other night found my wife and me gathered at a dinner table with friends; all of us had received our 2nd dose of the vaccine and the relaxation emanating at the gathering was noticeable.  As with so many other people who were watching the weather warm and the flowers emerging from the ground, there was a feeling of comfort as if just having the ability to see everyone's body language added to the interruptions and lively conversations and the clinking of glasses in a toast; it was all just showing us how much of the "everyday" we had missed, and how much we had tired of Zoom and other "online" talks.  Make no mistake, each of us had been overly careful in the past 10 months or so, almost paranoid-careful; we isolated or met with a neighbor once a month (or less) and made sure we kept our distance and had plenty of masks in the car, along with hand sanitizer and a cornucopia of a other viral-cleansing products.  But even with all of that, the risk of getti

     Something seemed to change in me as I returned from my recent trip , a spark perhaps diminished a bit.  Was it the crowds of Spring Break (my friends and others we spoke to kept saying, "we've never seen it so crowded") or the rainy and cold weather that seemed odd for this time of year (some days we simply didn't hike due to the inclement weather); or was it just what was going on in my head?  Why was this desolate landscape of eroded stone again drawing me into its clutches?  My friends kept commenting on the beauty of it all but I had to remind them that we may be noticing that "beauty" because we knew how fortunate we were...we weren't lost or searching for water or growing desperate for food; we had a car parked at the end of the trail.  I couldn't help but think of the first settlers or even the initial group of Native Americans who looked over this great expanse in both awe and in fear.  Where to go next?  Where might game and water be? 

    There is much to be joyous about, and much to (self) create worry about. But as I began to read yet another book about our miraculous bodies and how we have so much we've yet to understand about how life itself functions, I was reminded of the words of Norman Cousins who said: Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.  I had just finished the touching piece almost morbidly titled, How I Helped My Dad Die , the story of a daughter who understood what her father wanted; said Bloomberg author Esmé E. Deprez:: ... I found myself in the disturbing position of contemplating other ways to help him end his life.  Perhaps my husband and I could carry him and his gun down the hill behind his house and leave him?  Or take his rowboat out into the ocean and push him overboard?  Smother him with a pillow as he slept?  Her father, who "could wire a house, tile a floor, bag a duck, skin a deer, ride a motorcycle, and helm a boat,&qu