My cautious travel agent had insured that I would not miss my final connection, from San Francisco back to Spokane, Washington. If my long Lufthansa flight would arrive on time, and I cleared customs expeditiously, there was a small window to catch a United Express at 1:20. Any delay, and this connection could be lost; therefore she had booked me onto the next departing flight. This meant an awkward, and anticlimactic 6 hour wait. But winds were favorable across the Atlantic, we arrived early, and I was early enough to easily catch the earlier connection. And it had been delayed, anyway. (Ah, San Francisco!) I nervously stood-by for this, and made it.
Thus I arrived in Spokane several hours early, and made the final drive (2 hours) back to Sandpoint, arriving at 7:00pm, instead of nearer midnight.
And well I did, for my 13 year old daughter ran breathlessly out to my Trouper as I pulled up, and nearly crawled through the open window to embrace me. Which was, somehow, odd. She was happy to see me. A few seconds passed, and I realized that she was grateful to see me. My wife, Irene was in town, at her school, for "open house." Rebekkah was home alone. She told me that she had been frightened by the bears.
We live 11 miles northeast of the town, and this is truly the "countryside." Gold Mountain rises on the near horizon to the East, delaying the morning sun, and the lake filled Selkirk Crest stands stolidly as our western horizon, running as far north as the eye can see. During winter, the night skiing lights at Schweitzer Mountain are a soft white glow to the west, outside our den. We are regularly visited by deer. We see the very occasional elk or moose. Of larger birds, osprey, various hawks, and perhaps a golden eagle visit our airspace. Once before (that we know of) the yard was invaded by bears.
One night four or five years ago, with the dogs going crazy in their barking, I had shined a light out my bedroom window and seen a black bear sow and her cub climbing the mature quaking aspen which grows 25 feet from the back of our house. The living room was being remodeled at that time; the south wall had been cut for the large, new windows which had yet to be delivered, and all that stood between those bears and the interior of our house were ¼" sheets of plywood, tacked up over the openings. The bears were helping themselves to the seed in two birdfeeders which hung from the aspen. They didn't test the house.
Now, my daughter told me that a black bear sow and three cubs had been visiting. They had been coming for three of the past four nights. It has been a dry summer, and word is that the mountain berries have not been plentiful, forcing bears early into the valleys. Three hundred miles south of us, where the mighty Snake River runs through Hells Canyon, there is an outbreak of a killer disease killing back deer in the hundreds, which is somehow related to this same demi-draught. On our property, the bears had successively torn down the birdfeeders (grown to 6 in number, clustered on two trees), and invaded the woodshed where the seed is stored (destroying the metal garbage pail in which it was stored) and eaten all or most of it. They had on a following day entered the garage, and torn through the nice plastic containers in which we store dog food. These were now torn, twisted and ruined. On this early evening they had returned, and were rummaging. Rebekkah had fled upstairs, and yelled at them through a window, but to no avail.
We went into the house. Sure enough, inside, every remaining garbage pail was standing in the entryway. Some recovered dog food had been swept up, and was in plastic buckets in the laundry room. The sheltie was happy to see me, but walking on three legs, holding her right rear leg up and askew. Rebekkah explained that the dog had chased, or been chased by, the bears in the maelstrom of the first night, and in the process had gotten lost. There had been great worry for her. She had only that day been recovered (from the local animal shelter where she had been turned in), and she had been to the vet. He had diagnosed tendonitis. Comes from running for your life, I guess.
I wanted to talk of "A’s," of ABBA, of Karin Glenmark, of the summernight city itself, of the lovely Avenyn of Göteborg, of Kristina fran Duvemåla and Helen Sjöholm, but a new and pressing reality confronted me, and my daughter's need to be comforted was palpable. Fan gave wave to father. A latter day Odysseus, I was well come home.
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