an intense sharing

 a bear cub's panic attack

late morning I head down to the creek for a plunge,

earlier we had hiked several miles up and down the valley

in air so humid my sweat drenched my clothes and my spirit,

I was ready for the early morning rain

to help the already full stream wash away my sodden lethargy,

over the background sounds of the creek,

which to me are like an undercurrent of applause,

thousands of droplets clapping against the stream itself,

intensive, abrasive cries annoy me,

at first I blame the noise on human hikers,

in love with complaining sound,

like the unmuffled vehicles they throw up the mountain,

I go upstream and realize the complaining noise

must be coming from a animal,

a distress call of some kind,

I think I'm within fifty feet of the source,

but no animal in trouble appears,

I recruit my wife as fellow detective,

when she joins the visual search,

a bear appears within the obscuring green growth,

high on the bank across the creek,

then all speeds up,

a bear cub throws itself up 65 feet into a tree, 

then down, then up, then down,

a racing intensity to its movements,

a large bear appears at the tree's base

and climbs halfway up the tree,

as if in solidarity with the even higher cub,

it turns out the cub seems to be

 having a full-blown panic attack,

I do not know what precipitated it,

both bears lightly meet at the base of the tree

and head off northeast,

it is a gift that the Venn diagram of our worlds

intersected enough

for a commonality of the moment

to let me taste the intensity of the truth

of what their moments reveal to them,

we are lucky if we see only a few highlights.

by Henry H. Walker

August 21, ‘26