Here on our road, we have no idea what the weather is like in the rest of the county because we have our own particular meteorological system. In the winter our valley can be knee-high in blizzard-like snow, while down on the main route all will be clear and the ground bare. Sometimes we have rain that feels like it must cover the entire world but drive over the hill, and the sky is blue and the roads are dry as a desert. This is not a well-publicized phenomenon - only the folks who live here understand how idiosyncratic our micro-climate is and it is only these same folks - my neighbors - who also keep careful track of the wildlife count along the road. So Tuesday was a red-letter day, both in the weather department and as far as wildlife was concerned. The day started in thick fog. That is, our valley started out in thick fog but a mile away on the other side of the hill (I was on my way to pick early morning berries with a friend, so I know) it was like the fog never existed. Clear as a bell, not a cloud in the sky, the early sunlight bright and white as if shining down from an unfiltered spotlight. Later in the day (and after the fog dissipated) the cumulus clouds appeared creating the deep green, blue and white color palette typical of the most glorious days in a Delaware County summer. But it was the evening event that really set the road to buzzing - and that event happened to me. I had just come inside from my vegetable garden which is next to the road (important fact) and had cooked myself an omelet with new zucchini, chard, basil, chervil and parsley. And just to give you a visual of my meal, picture the green of the vegetables contrasting with eggs whose yolks were practically orange from all the good stuff the chickens ate while they roamed freely. Anyway, I went into my library to eat and no sooner did I sit down than a movement out the front window caught the corner of my eye. And what was it? A BEAR. On the road. Not five feet from the garden where I had been picking greens ten minutes before. Yes. A giant teddy bear with whom I nearly had an up close and personal encounter, waddling up the road as if he did it every day. I tried to take a picture - to prove to myself and everyone else that the bear hadn't been a mirage or a chervil-induced hallucination and although he is in the final picture above, he is behind the bush. Really. Well if I tell you that news travels faster on this road than on the internet, I wouldn't be exaggerating. I told my neighbor Nancy when I saw her later in the evening and by the next day the tongues were wagging. I am now the toast of the road - the "New York women", as some call me, who has seen a bear. Marjorie, the 90 year old matriarch of the farming dynasty at the bottom of the hill stopped by during the nightly ride she and her husband Wilbur take in their open air farm vehicle (I don't know what you call it - part tractor, part atv, part surrey with the fringe on top) just to tell me that in all her years on this road, she had never seen a bear and that I was, indeed, a very lucky person.
