A Wilderness Tale

She was taken by bears, that was the consensus, dragged off in her sleeping bag; tracks confirmed. Later the child was eaten, but not before she died of old age. She lodged with the Grizzlies, growing sturdy, unusually hirsute for a human girl, but pretty in a wide-bottomed way. Frank Goddard and his hunting buddy Pete had her in his sights one winter. He almost pulled the trigger on his bolt action 30-06, but saw she was different and with her cubs. They were leaf-mossed bundles of mewing need. She was foraging for dead squirrels. After one exceptionally hard year, an old bear warned her. “We should have chewed you up, buried you in the forest in juicy frozen lumps for when the hunger gnaws.” Said the bear. She cried when she left the bear clan and her cubs, but she stayed in the wilderness. Her limbs lost their ursine strength, her body shrank, became twiggy and hollow. A party of campers from Cleveland claimed to have seen her buzzing through the tree’s, humming. She grew wizened. No new leaf uncurled in her, then she died. Bob Turner found her remains as he led a group of Eagle Scouts over the ‘Big Hole’ mountain pass one summer. She had kept the sleeping bag, she had made it her totem, a thing she wore like an animal spirit. Scavengers had eaten most of her, but the bears killed the animals and brought them back to lay beside her scatterings. The Scouts took pictures and reported the find to the Montana Rangers, but the Chippewa Cree had removed all sign of her death by the time the Rangers returned.