Then again you find yourself awake. Is it hours or days or weeks since you were last awake? You do not know, and it does not matter. So you croon, and mumble, and dream, and sleep again; and wake, and croon, and mumble, and dream. Sometimes you are conscious of feeling stiff, and think you will change your position; but, after all, it does not matter. Nothing matters; for you are already floating off again, the wall of your den grows indistinct, and you are away in dreams once more for an hour, or a day, or a week.
At last a day comes when you wake into something more like complete consciousness than you have known since you shut yourself up. There is a new feeling in the air; a sense of moisture and fresh smells are mingling8 with the warm dry scent9 of your den. And you are aware that you have not changed your position for more than a quarter of a year, but have been squatting10 on your heels, with your back against the wall and your nose folded into your paws across your breast; and you want to stretch your hind-legs dreadfully. But you do not do it. It is still too comfortable where you are. You may move a little, and have a vague[107] idea that it might be rather nice outside. But you do not go to see; you only take the other paw into your mouth, and, still crooning to yourself, you are asleep again.
This happens again and again, and each time the change in the feeling of the air is more marked, and the scents11 of the new year outside grow stronger and more pungent12. At last one day comes daylight, where the snow has melted from the opening in front of you, and with the daylight come the notes of birds and the ringing of the woodpecker—rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat!—from a tree near by. But even these signs that the spring is at hand again would not tempt13 you out if it were not for another feeling that begins to assert itself, and will not let you rest. You find you are hungry, horribly hungry. It is of no use to say to yourself that you are perfectly14 snug15 and contented16 where you are, and that there is all the spring and summer to get up in. You are no longer contented. It is nearly five months since you had your last meal, and you will not have another till you go out for yourself and get it. Mumbling17 your paws will not satisfy you. There is really nothing for it but to get up.
But, oh, what a business it is, that getting up![108] Your shoulders are cramped18 and your back is stiff; and as for your legs underneath19 you, you wonder if they will really ever get supple20 and strong again. First you lift your head from your breast and try moving your neck about, and sniff21 at the walls of your den. Then you unfold your arms, and—ooch!—how they crack, first one and then the other! At last you begin to roll from one side to the other, and try to stretch each hind-leg in turn; then, cautiously letting yourself drop on all fours, you give a step, and before you know it you have staggered out into the open air.
It is very early in the morning, and the day is just breaking, and all the mountain-side is covered with a clinging pearly mist; but to your eyes the light seems very strong, and the smell of the new moist earth and the resinous22 scent of the pines almost hurt your nostrils23. One side of the gully in front of you is brown and bare, but in the bottom, and clinging to the other side, are patches of moist and half-melted snow, and on all sides you hear the drip of falling moisture and the ripple24 of little streams of water which are running away to swell25 the creeks26 and rivers in every valley bottom.
You are shockingly unsteady on your feet, and[109] feel very dazed and feeble; but you are also hungrier than ever now, with the keen morning air whetting27 your appetite, and the immediate28 business ahead of you is to find food. So you turn to the bank at your side and begin to grub; and as you grub you wander on, eating the roots that you scratch up and the young shoots of plants that are appearing here and there. And all the time the day is growing, and the sensation is coming back to your limbs, and your hunger is getting satisfied, and you are wider and wider awake. And, thoroughly29 interested in what you are about, before you are aware of it, you are fairly started on another year of life.
That is how a bear begins each spring. It may be a few days later or a few days earlier when one comes out; but the sensations are the same. You are always just as stiff, and the smells are as pungent, and the light is as strong, and the hunger as great. For the first few days you really think of nothing but of finding enough to eat. As soon as you have eaten, and eaten until you think you are satisfied, you are hungry again; and so you wander round looking for food, and going back to your den to sleep.
That spring when I came out it was very much[110] as it had been the spring before, when I was a little cub30. The squirrels were chattering31 in the trees (I wondered whether old Blacky had been burned in the fire), and the woodpecker was as busy as ever—rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat!—overhead. There were several woodchucks—fat, waddling32 things—living in the same gully with me, and they had been abroad for some days when I woke up. On my way down to the stream on that first morning, I found a porcupine33 in my path, but did not stop to slap it. By the river’s bank the little brown-coated minks34 were hunting among the grass, and by the dam the beavers35 were hard at work protecting and strengthening their house against the spring floods, which were already rising.
It was only a couple of hundred yards or so from my den to the stream, and for the first few days I hardly went further than that. But it was impossible that I should not all the time—that is, as soon as I could think of anything except my hunger—be contrasting this spring with the spring before, when Kahwa and I had played about the rock and the cedar-trees, and I had tumbled down the hill. And the more I thought of it, the less I liked being alone. And my father and mother, I knew, must be somewhere close by me—for I[111] presumed they had spent the winter in the spot that they had chosen—so I made up my mind to go and join them again.
It was in the early evening that I went, about a week after I had come out of my winter-quarters, and I had no trouble in finding the place; but when I did find it I also found things that I did not expect.
‘Surely,’ I said to myself as I came near, ‘that is little Kahwa’s voice!’ There could be no doubt of it. She was squealing36 just as she used to do when she tried to pull me away from the rock by my hind-foot. So I hurried on to see what it could mean, and suddenly the truth dawned upon me.
My parents had two new children. I had never thought of that possibility. I heard my mother’s voice warning the cubs37 that someone was coming, and as I appeared the young ones ran and snuggled up to her, and stared at me as if I was a stranger and they were afraid of me, as I suppose they were. It made me feel awkward, and almost as if my mother was a stranger, too; but after standing38 still a little time and watching them I walked up. Mother met me kindly39, but, somehow, not like a mother meeting her own cub, but like a she-bear meeting any he-bear in the forest. The cubs kept[112] behind her and out of the way. I spoke40 to mother and rubbed noses with her, and told her that I was glad to see her. She evidently thought well of me, and I was rather surprised, when standing beside her, to find that she was not nearly so much bigger than I as I had supposed.
AS I APPEARED THE YOUNG ONES RAN AND SNUGGLED UP TO HER.
[Enlarge]
But before I had been there more than a minute mother gave me warning that father was coming, and, turning, I saw him walking down the hillside towards us. He saw me at the same time, and stopped and growled41. At first, I think, not knowing who I was, he was astonished to see my mother talking to a strange bear. When he did recognise me, however, I might still have been a stranger, for any friendliness42 that he showed. He sat up on his haunches and growled, and then came on slowly, swinging his head, and obviously not at all disposed to welcome me. Again I was surprised, to see that he was not as big as I had thought, and for a moment wild ideas of fighting him, if that was what he wanted, came into my head. I wished to stay with mother, and even though he was my father, I did not see why I should go away alone and leave her. But, tall though I was getting, I had not anything like my father’s weight, and, however bitterly I might wish to rebel, rebellion [113]was useless. Besides, my mother, though she was kind to me, would undoubtedly43 have taken my father’s part, as it was right that she should do.
So I moved slowly away as my father came up, and as I did so even the little cubs growled at me, siding, of course, with their father against the stranger whom they had never seen. Father did not try to attack me, but walked up to mother and began licking her, to show that she belonged to him. I disliked going away, and thought that perhaps he would relent; but when I sat down, as if I was intending to stay, he growled and told me that I was not wanted.
I ought by this time to have grown accustomed to being alone, and to have been incapable44 of letting myself be made miserable45 by a snub, even from my father. But I was not; I was wretched. I do not think that even on the first night after Kahwa was caught, or on that morning when I saw her dead, that I felt as completely forlorn as I did that day when I turned away from my mother, and went down the mountain-side back to my own place alone. The squirrels chattered46 at me, and the woodpecker rat-tat-tat-ed, and the woodchucks scurried47 away, and I hated them all. What company were they to me? I[114] was lonely, and I craved48 the companionship of my own kind.
But it was to be a long time before I found it. I was now a solitary49 bear, with my own life to live and my own way to make in the world, with no one to look to for guidance and no one to help me if I needed help; but many regarded me as an enemy, and would have rejoiced if I were killed.
In those first days I thought of the surly solitary bear who had taken our home while we were away, and whom I had vowed50 some day to punish; and I began to understand in some measure why he was so bad-tempered51. If we had met then, I almost believe I would have tried to make friends with him.
I have said that many animals would have rejoiced had I been killed. This is not because bears are the enemies of other wild things, for we really kill very little except beetles52 and other insects, frogs and lizards53, and little things like mice and chipmunks54. We are not as the wolves, the coyotes, the pumas55, or the weasels, which live on the lives of other animals, and which every other thing in the woods regards as its sworn foe56. Still, smaller animals are mostly afraid of us, and the carcase of a dead bear means a feast for a number[115] of hungry things. If a bear cannot defend his own life, he will have no friends to do it for him; and while, as I have said before, a full-grown bear in the mountains has no need to fear any living thing, man always excepted, in stand-up fight, it is none the less necessary to be always on one’s guard.
In my case fear had nothing to do with my hatred57 of loneliness. Even the thought of man himself gave me no uneasiness. I was sure that no human beings were as yet within many miles of my home, and I knew that I should always have abundant warning of their coming. Moreover, I already knew man. He was not to me the thing of terror and mystery that he had been a year ago, or that he still was to most of the forest folk. I had cause enough, it is true, to know how dangerous and how savagely58 cruel he was, and for that I hated him. But I had also seen enough of him to have a contempt for his blindness and his lack of the sense of scent. Had I not again and again, when in the town, dodged59 round the corner of a building, and waited while he passed a few yards away, or stood immovable in the dark shadow of a building, and looked straight at him while he went by utterly60 unconscious that I was near?[116] Nothing could live in the forest for a week with no more eyesight, scent, or hearing than a man possesses, and without his thunder-stick he would be as helpless as a lame61 deer. All this I understood, and was not afraid that, if our paths should cross again, I should not be well able to take care of myself.
But while there was no fear added to my loneliness, the loneliness itself was bad enough. Having none to provide for except myself, I had no difficulty in finding food. For the first few weeks, I think, I did nothing but wander aimlessly about and sleep, still using my winter den for that purpose. As the summer came on, however, I began to rove, roaming usually along the streams, and sleeping there in the cool herbage by the water’s edge during the heat of the day. My chief pleasure, I think, was in fishing, and I was glad my mother had shown me how to do it. No bear, when hungry, could afford to fish for his food, for it takes too long; but I had all my time to myself, and nearly every morning and evening I used to get my trout62 for breakfast or for supper. At the end of a long hot day, I know nothing pleasanter than, after lying a while in the cold running water, to stretch one’s self out along the river’s edge, under the shadow of a bush, and[117] wait, paw in water, till the trout comes gliding63 within striking distance; and then the sudden stroke, and afterwards the comfortable meal off the cool juicy fish in the soft night air. I became very skilful64 at fishing, and, from days and days of practice, it was seldom indeed that I lost my fish if once I struck.
Time, too, I had for honey-hunting, but I was never sure that it was worth the trouble and pain. In nine cases out of ten the honey was too deeply buried in a tree for me to be able to reach it, and in trying I was certain to get well stung for my pains. Once in a while, however, I came across a comb that was easy to reach, and the chance of one of those occasional finds made me spend, not hours only, but whole days at a time, looking for the bees’ nests.
Along by the streams were many blueberry-patches, though none so large as that which had cost Kahwa her life; but during the season I could always find berries enough. And so, fishing and bee-hunting, eating berries and digging for roots, I wandered on all through the summer. I had no one place that I could think of as a home more than any other. I preferred not to stay near my father and mother, and so let myself wander,[118] heading for the most part westward65, and further into the mountains as the summer grew, and then in the autumn turning south again. I must have wandered over many hundred miles of mountain, but when the returning chill in the air told me that winter was not very far away, I worked round so as to get back into somewhat the same neighbourhood as I had been in last winter, not more, perhaps, than ten miles away.
On the whole, it was an uneventful year. Two or three times I met a grizzly66, and always got out of the way as fast as I could. Once only I found myself in the neighbourhood of man, and I gave him a wide berth67. Many times, of course—in fact, nearly every day—I met other bears like myself, and sometimes I made friends with them, and stayed in their company for the better part of a day, perhaps at a berry-patch or in the wide shallows of a stream. But there was no place for me—a strong, growing he-bear, getting on for two years old—in any of the families that I came across. Parents with young cubs did not want me. Young bears in their second year were usually in couples. The solitary bears that I met were generally he-bears older than I, and, though we were friendly on meeting, neither cared for the[119] other’s companionship. Again and again in these meetings I was struck by the fact that I was unusually big and strong for my age, the result, I suppose, as I have already said, of the accident that threw me on my own resources so young. I never met young bears of my own age that did not seem like cubs to me. Many times I came across bears who were one and even two years older than myself, but who had certainly no advantage of me in height, and, I think, none in weight. But I had no occasion to test my strength in earnest that summer, and when winter came, and the mountain-peaks in the neighbourhood showed white again against the dull gray sky, I was still a solitary animal, and acutely conscious of my loneliness.
That year I made my den in a cave which I found high up on a mountain-side, and which had evidently been used by bears at some time or other, though not for the last year or two. There I made my nest with less trouble than the year before, and at the first serious snowfall I shut myself up for another long sleep.
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1
consecutive
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| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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mumble
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| n./v.喃喃而语，咕哝 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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10
squatting
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的现在分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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scents
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| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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15
snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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21
sniff
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| vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视 | |
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resinous
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| adj.树脂的，树脂质的，树脂制的 | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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25
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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creeks
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| n.小湾( creek的名词复数 )；小港；小河；小溪 | |
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27
whetting
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| v.（在石头上）磨（刀、斧等）( whet的现在分词 )；引起，刺激（食欲、欲望、兴趣等） | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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32
waddling
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| v.（像鸭子一样）摇摇摆摆地走( waddle的现在分词 ) | |
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porcupine
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| n.豪猪， 箭猪 | |
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minks
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| n.水貂( mink的名词复数 )；水貂皮 | |
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beavers
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| 海狸( beaver的名词复数 )； 海狸皮毛； 棕灰色； 拼命工作的人 | |
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36
squealing
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| v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的现在分词 ) | |
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cubs
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| n.幼小的兽，不懂规矩的年轻人( cub的名词复数 ) | |
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38
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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40
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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41
growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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42
friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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43
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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44
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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45
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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46
chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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47
scurried
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| v.急匆匆地走( scurry的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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49
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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50
vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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51
bad-tempered
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| adj.脾气坏的 | |
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52
beetles
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| n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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53
lizards
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| n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 ) | |
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54
chipmunks
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| n.金花鼠( chipmunk的名词复数 ) | |
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55
pumas
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| n.美洲狮( puma的名词复数 )；彪马；于1948年成立于德国荷索金劳勒(Herzogenaurach)的国际运动品牌；创始人：鲁道夫及达斯勒。 | |
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56
foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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57
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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58
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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dodged
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| v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 )；回避 | |
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60
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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61
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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62
trout
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| n.鳟鱼；鲑鱼(属) | |
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63
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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64
skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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65
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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66
grizzly
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| adj.略为灰色的，呈灰色的；n.灰色大熊 | |
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67
berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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