Some stories earn their place around the table simply by being true. This is one of them.
Two years ago in New Mexico, I was sitting on the back deck at my friends Ron and Rob’s place, book in hand, when a big brown bear ambled out of the scrub just beyond the terrace. For a moment I simply marvelled — how lovely, it’s a bear — before sense kicked in. I put my glass down very carefully and went to find Rob, who had his headphones in and took a little convincing that this was, in fact, an emergency.
By the time Ron got home from shopping, the bear had wandered off, entirely unbothered, and Rob prescribed the obvious remedy: a gummy, to calm the nerves. I’d always steered clear of the THC ones in New Mexico, but this seemed like the moment. Half a gummy later, I’d lost the power of speech, and Rob was out searching the bushes for bear tracks, unable to leave the two of us alone for even half an hour.
The bear proved very real — tracks, a sleeping spot in the undergrowth, and eventually footage from a neighbour’s outdoor camera, in case anyone doubted it (they didn’t; New Mexico’s bears come down from the mountains each summer, following the old irrigation channels the Mexicans built long ago).
A few days later, shopping at Barnes & Noble in Dallas, I spotted a small stuffed bear on the shelf. I turned her over and found a label sewn into her tummy — made just outside Watford, shipped all the way to Dallas, and now about to make the journey home with me. I named her Oita, the feminine Spanish for bear, and she’s travelled everywhere with me since. My friends even brought me back a beautiful bear-head bottle stopper from their last visit.
So that’s the story. That’s why bears are my spirit animal.