DONT FEED THE BEARS by Peter Nolan Smith

My second youngest sister has frequently called me a liar.

In some ways Pam hasn't been not wrong, for my remembrance of the past differs from the collective memories of family and friends.

Several years ago I headed up to Maine for my youngest sister's birthday. Watchic Pond was a short distance outside of Portland. Not much had changed along Route 25 and even less at the lake, except the pine trees were taller and we were a little older.

After a long day lazing around the camp on Watchic Pond we sat outside on a long wooden table for a lobster dinner. One-and-quarters were cheap that season and my brother-in-law boiled a two dozen in a huge pot. My father, aunt and uncle, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews consumed big bottles of white wine, as the sky darkened to a cobalt blue and lake lapped at the shore speaking a wind-driven language.

We broke the shells to get at the succulent white meat. The empty claws, tails, and legs, and knuckles grew into a substantial pile.

"That's going to make some bears happy."

"What do you mean?" my uncle asked from the other end of the table.

"Don't you remember the bears eating garbage at the Standish dump?"

"I never saw that." My eighty-five year-old father drew a blank.

"I remember seeing them sitting on their haunches, eating food from people's trash.

There had been no plastic bags in the 50s.

"Are you making this up?" my aunt and uncle asked in unison.

"It wasn't a dream. I was standing on the bluff looking at the bears. They ate with good manners too."

My older sister and brothers rolled their eyes and Pam demanded, "Were you on LSD?"

My younger sister was a trial lawyer and I was thrust onto the stand for interrogation.

"No, I was only five." I was almost sure of my answer, then again no one had proven that the CIA hadn't experimented on children in the 1950s.

"Maybe it was an acid flashback." My brother-in-law laughed at his joke.

Everyone from our generation joined him.

I was the family's one hippie.

"What's so funny," my father grumbled from his seat.

"The bears at the dump."

"Never happened." My father returned to his post-dinner stupor.

"No, I swear I saw them."

"Well, there are bears in these woods." Uncle Russ looked over his shoulder. He had graduated fromthe University of Maine. Their mascot was a brown bear. He was also partial to a good story.

"Not these woods." Pam had heard too many lies from her clients. None of them ever told the truth and nothing but the truth.

"Maybe not this time of year, but I had a cousin up in Naples." My uncle was a Maine native. "This bear kept on eating his garbage. My uncle locked the lids and build a shed. The bear found a way in. He finally stored the trash in his house,"

"Did that solve the problem?" My brother-in-law was good around the house.

"No, the bear crashed through a kitchen wall."

"What your cousin do then?" my older sister was scared of any animal bigger than a cat, although her twenty-pound Shadow was no kitty.

"He shot the bear in the ass with buckshot and the bear ran away. Never to be seen again."

"Like the bears at the dump." Pam wasn't letting it go.

"I saw what I saw."

My older brother had been there then and I looked to him.

He shrugged to indicate I was on my own.

"I believe you, but everyone else thinks you're lying," my sister joked to the laughter of our gathered family.

"Here's to your 38th Birthday." I raised my glass.

"You never mention a woman's age," my aunt Sally admonished me.

"I can live with thirty-eight." Pam was on the other side of 40.

"So some lies are good."

"36 would have been better and bears at best left in the woods."

After dessert I helped bring in the plates.

"What about the lobster shells?"

"Leave them outside. We don't want them to stink up the house." My brother-in-law loved his camp.

We washed the dishes, while my family disappeared into the bedrooms. My brother-in-law and I had a vodka for a nightcap and he said,"I love that story about the bears at the dump."

"It really did happen."

"All stories are true, if interesting."

It was an old family adage.

I bid him good night and went to my room.

Lying on the bed I thought about bears.

We had a long history and I went to bed remembering my teddy bear. His name was Billy. I have no idea where he went astray. Maybe it was during our move from Maine to Boston in 1960, but I wished he came out of the trees tonight and rolled over to shut my eyes.

My next connection to bears came from the book GOLDILOCKS. My dearly departed mother read it to my older brother and me before switching to Lynd Ward's THE BIGGEST BEAR as a bedtime tale. The plot followed a nicer version of THE YEARLING, in which a boy adopted a bear cub in a Maine farming community until the bear grew too big to be with humans. The happy ending was the capture of the bear by hunters from a city zoo, although the bears at Franklin Zoo in Boston did not seem to happy with their lot in life.

Once we moved from Maine to the South shore, bears figured less and less in our lives, but they popped up as Yogi and Boo-boo on TV and I read THE BIGGEST BEAR at least three times a year. I begged my father to take us to Franklin Zoo in Boston and he relented one week. The lions and tigers slept on dusty soil and I said in front of the bear den, "These bears don't look very happy."

"Bears are bears. They're only happy when they're eating," explained my father, but I never asked to visit the zoo again.

THE BIGGEST BEAR was retired to my top bookshelf in my teenage years to be replaced by my adoration of the Boston Bruins. They won a Stanley Cups in 1972 and I drank beer toasting THE BIGGEST BEAR and the Big Bad Bruins.

That summer I hiked into the White Mountains and camped without a permit. I trekked from the Swift River to Sawyer Pond. I carried no tent, only a drop cloth and a sleeping bag. A little before sunset I set up camp in the shelter of a glacier rock. I ate cold beans for dinner rather than risk the rangers spotting a fire. The Red Sox game on radio guided me to sleep under a starry sky.

A snort disturbed my sleep. Something big was lumbering through the underbrush. My hand grabbed a flashlight, but hesitated turning it on in case the prowler was a ranger. The noise went away and I spend the rest of the night watching the darkness for the fangs of a black bear.

In the morning I found bear tracks twenty feet from my shelter and hurried back to the road.

Bears were best left in the wilderness or hockey rink.

The folk singer Dave Van Ronk performed frequently in Harvard Square and sang a wicked version of THE TEDDY BEARS' PICNIC with his coarse voice lending the children's song an unintended menace. One time I brought him THE BIGGEST BEAR to autographed and the bearded singer laughed, saying, "I've been asked to sign a lot of things, but never a kid's book."

"Glad to have given you a first time."

I loved Dave Van Ronk, the Pope of Greenwich Village.

In 1974 I worked at a restaurant on Cape Ann. The entire staff was gay. We smoked pot after work at a friend's house on Rockport's Bear's Neck. Gay men mauled me worse than any bear, but I escaped with my masculinity intact as my universe of bears jumbled with images of them eating garbage at dumps, cartoons, movies, and story books along with hairy gay men.

When I moved to New York to be a famous writer, I visited the Central Park Zoo.

The elephant was chained in a smelly cage and the gorilla dodged trash thrown by school children, but the polar bears seemed content as the bears at the dump with a swimming pool, free food, and a mate. I imagined THE BIGGEST BEAR to have shared their fate.

In 1982 I left New York for Paris, where a German friend had decorated his 16th arrondisement house with bear furniture. Jurgen thought I was the next Henry Miller. I wanted to be John Steinbeck. My spelling was atrocious enough to be Hemingway.

Jurgen hired me to work at a nightclub in Hamburg. The mysterious German's Reeperbahn apartment was packed with bear figurines of all sizes. One night we were drinking there.

When I asked about his collection, Jurgen said, "This? This is not a collection. These are my friends. I am a bastard. My father never came back from Russia. As a child I had no one to protect me. Believe me Hamburg is tough. I created an imaginary bear and he was inside me to get me out of any trouble. After I started making money, I bought these. They protect me now. You want another beer?"

Beers tasted better than bear or so I have heard.

Jurgen died in 1985 under mysterious circumstances in Paris.

I wasn't even sure that he was dead, until seeing him in the morgue. I wanted to make sure that his death was natural and broke into his apartment on Montmartre. There was no blood on the floor, but I wiped the surfaces for my fingerprints and stole a small bear as a keepsake. His step-brother put the rest up for auction. I still have mine somewhere, although I misplaced my edition of THE LITTLEST BEAR in New York and the Bruins avoided the Stanley Cup with frustrating regularity.

Despite their lack of success I continued to wear their shirt with the old logo.

In the 80s bears became beasts from Wall Street. Brokers hung in the East Village. They spoke about 'bulls' as their friend. Bears were their enemy.

During my journeys throughout Asia in the 90s, I ran into trained bears in India. These creatures were gaunt shadows of the grizzly bear of legend, a golden beast towering over man.

I was seeing Mrs. Carolina at this time. The married blonde waited for me and I came back from my trips to her.

My father asked about our relationship.

Since she was married, I answered, "We are traveling companions."

"So that's what they call it now."

Ms. Carolina originally hailed from the Adirondacks and on a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains I told her the story about the bears eating garbage at the dump.

"We had bears too." The police decided the proximity of bears to humans was a danger better not tested and used firecrackers to scare them away."

"And did they?"

"I guess so."

"You know how to escape a bear?" asked Ms. Carolina.

"Run faster than the people with you."

"No." She considered that ungallant. "If you're being chased by a bear, throw your jacket at them."

"You mean like giving a mugger your wallet."

"No, a bear can run 30 mph. The jacket will make him curious. At that point you're supposed to get a tree between the bear and you. If you're lucky, you might survive. Maybe you'll be lucky."

I was a big believer in luck.

On a trip to Montana and Wyoming May 1994 we stayed at the Chico Springs Hotel. I hiked into the mountains. After an hour I reached a sign stated, "Anyone proceeding after this point without a guide will be prosecuted if not eaten."

It didn't make any sense.

Eaten?

By what?

I gazed around the slopes.

The bears in the Rockies didn't eat just garbage.

They ate everything.

Across the river the wind swayed over a pasture. Bears might be lurking in the high grasses for me to get closer. I picked up a rock and threw it hard. The invisible bears didn't break from cover and I hiked back to the lodge very fast.

I found Mrs. Carolina soaking in the springs and joined her.

"How was your walk?"

"Fine." She didn't need to know that I had been scared.

The next day we stopped in Yellowstone National Park. A huge fire in 1988 had devastated its forests and huge swathes of the volcanic plateau were charred from horizon to horizon. Ashes clogged the streams and burnt bones laid as humps along the river banks. The fire had been a disaster, but the torched trees allowed motorists unrestricted vistas. Bison cruised the road and elk grazed the meadows, plus some sections of the park were untouched by flames and hiked along a river.

Bear tracks led away from the stream and Mrs. Carolina asked, "What are you doing?"

"Following these tracks."

"And why do you want to meet a bear? Maybe a grizzly bear?"

"No reason."

"It's spring. Bears are hungry. How fast can you run?"

"A little fast." My best time at the 440 had been 55 seconds. A little better than 15 MPH. "Maybe we should go back to the car."

"That's a good idea." Ms. Carolina didn't fool with big animals, only me.

Later that week nearing Glacier Park we spotted a grizzly loping across the road at a good clip.

"He must be in a hurry." Ms. Carolina was driving and sped up the car. She didn't believe in rubber-necking with her life on the line.

"He's probably going to the town dump."

"I don't think so. There are no towns up here." Ms. Carolina stepped on the gas. She had a heavy foot at the best of times.

At the park entrance I told the young ranger about the grizzly.

"It looked like a big dog."

"Just be glad you didn't pet it. They can be mean this time of year." A young ranger told us, as he made change. "Mostly they like to stay away from people, but the brown bears are very friendly, unless you get between them and they're cubs or food." His associate was a man of regulations. "We don't condone feeding them. Only make them dangerous. We had two fatal attacks in the last ten years."

The young ranger handed Ms. Carolina the ticket.

"You be safe."

As we drove away, Ms. Carolina asked, "Why didn't you tell them about your dump story?"

"Because those bears aren't these bears." Mine wore a smile and had good manners. "Besides bears don't like man, wee smell bad and taste worse."

For the rest of the trip we didn't get out of the car, except at the scenic stops on the pass.

We were playing it safe, because in the wilderness we were the garbage dump for the bears.

Recently I watched a movie GRIZZLY MAN, in which this incredibly naive amateur naturalist traveled north every year to live with the bears. Without them Timothy Treadwell had no life and Werner Herzog assembled Treadwell's video recordings into a documentary.

The pay-off was a bear mauling 'grizzly man' and his loyal girlfriend.

Neither survived the attack.

I felt sorry for the girl. The guy had put her in a bad spot. The bear was just being a bear and the next morning after the lobster dinner on Watchic Pond I woke early for a swim. Everyone else was asleep, except for my father, who was doing a crossword puzzle in the kitchen.

"How'd you sleep?"

"I dreamed a lot about bears."

"I haven't seen a bear in years." He still lived on the South Shore. Bears were extinct south of the Neponset River. "But they're out there."

"Not as much as mosquitoes." The Maine woods were famous for the swarming insects.

"They shouldn't be that bad this time of the morning. Enjoy your swim."

I exited from the cabin. A thin mist hovered over the lake. Two loons cried out in the mist. I passed the long table and looked down on the ground. The lobster shells were gone. I searched the dirt for tracks. The paw prints were unmistakably those of a bear. My head snapped to the right and left. The bear was nowhere in sight, but they are very clever for such a large creature. I almost went back inside to tell my father about the bear, but if they didn't believe me about the bears in the dump, then there wasn't a chance they would believe me about the night intruder. I went to the end of the dock and jumped in the water. It was cold and upon breaking the surface for air I laughed about my discovery.

Over the years I have told the story about bears eating garbage all over the world. Some people believed me. Some thought it's a good story. Others feel I'm lying, but those bears were there in the Standish dump. Maybe they weren't smiling, which I will not admit to my sister.

After all we sometimes need to believe in something that isn't the truth, especially if it's interesting.

UPPER THERE by Peter Nolan Smith

In August of 1987 friends in Michigan extended invitations to visit them in Onekema and the Upper Peninsula. Paulie, Gregg, and I celebrated our departure at the Milk Bar in Lower Manhattan.

"Why are you going to Michigan for vacation?" Scottie the owner was a New Yorker. The rest of the country was a blank to him.

"I've never been there before." My trips through the Midwest never ranged farther north than the Interstates.

"I want to see America." Gregg was an English literary agent. His America consisted on Manhattan and Hollywood.

"The real America." Paulie had been brought up outside of Detroit. His father had built cars for Chrysler. The bearded Midwesterner taught sculpture at School of The Visual Arts. "Onekema has the highest sand dunes overlooking the waters of the most beautiful of the Great Lakes and the Upper Peninsula is the Land Time Forgot with forests primeval by the shores of Gitchie Gumee."

"By the shining Big-Sea-Water." I had learned THE SONG OF HIAWATHA in grammar school.

"Have a good trip." Scottie bought a round of drinks, thankful to be spending his summer in New York.

After closing the club we packed Paulie’s green Ford 150 pick-up, then left Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel. Our first stop was the Delaware River, where the three of us changed into jeans and tee-shirts. We didn't bother to clean out the truck. The mess on the floor gave it character. Crossing the bridge we entered America with the sun rising in the East.

"I understand the attraction of Onekama with the beach on Lake Michigan, but the Upper Peninsula seems far away." I counted the miles on a map. It was almost the same distance to Miami Beach.

"The Upper Peninsula has about a third of Michigan's landmass and only 3% of its population. The Yoopers or UPers came there to work the mines. Most of them closed and the towns are deserted and the forests are thicker than ever. It's like traveling back into time. You'll love it."

"Sounds heavenly to me." Gregg was keen on seeing the northern forests. He was from London, where there are more people than trees.

Traffic was light beyond the Allegheny Mountains and the day's temperature rose with every westward mile. The blue sky gave way to haze by the Ohio frontier. Big trucks crowded the highway and fast cars sped past us. Paulie insisted on driving the speed limit.

"I have two guns, A shotgun and 45 were under the driver's seat. Paulie liked to be prepared for anything. "Neither are registered, so I'm taking it slow, plus who knows what you two are carrying."

"Nothing." Gregg and I said in unison. All three of us knew that both of us were liars.

After the next fill-up at a truck stop I crashed in the flatbed. The humid wind ruffled my clothing without any relief from the heat and the heavy sky held the promise of a tornado. An exit sign read AKRON.

I sat up and leaned against the back of the cab. Greg and Paul waved to indicate that we were on schedule. I wrapped a red bandanna around my head. Sunglasses weakened the harsh sunlight. We were a rolling version of MAD MAX, the prequel to the apocalypse.

We passed a state trooper cooping in his cruiser in a copse of trees.

His eyes met mine.

The battered pick-up was maintaining 60. Most of the other cars traveled much faster. The cop instinctively clocked the three of us as potential wrongdoers. His lights lit up and the cruiser roared onto the interstate with lights flashing and siren blaring.

The rest of the motorists parted a way for the statie. The cruiser fell in behind our pickup. Paul pulled over onto the breakdown lane and I thought, "Drugs, guns, drink. We're going to jail."

The young trooper got out of his cruiser. Paul was in his 40s. Greg and I were in our 30s. There was a big generation gap between the trooper and us. His hand flicked the safety strap from his holster. He was expecting trouble.

"You want me to get out of the truck?" I was good at taking orders in a situation like this. My grand-uncle had been a detective with the Boston Police.

"You stay where you are and keep your hands in sight." He gripped his service revolver and peered into the front seat. The trooper requweated Paulie's license.

"Sure thing." He fumbled with his wallet. His search was taking too long.

"Sir, please get out of the truck?" The trooper stepped back carefully to avoid the speeding traffic. His knuckles were white on the gun.

"Yes, officer." Paul opened the door. Several empty beer cans fell onto the pavement.

"You've been drinking." His words were a statement not a question.

"Last night I had, but not today." Paulie was telling a lie. We had left the Milk Bar at 5am. "Those empties we were saving for the next trash stop. I didn’t want to throw them out the window."

The trooper wasn't impressed by his erudite accent.

Cops only needed a high school diploma.

"Sir, please, come to the back of the truck."

Paulie joined the officer and the trooper wagged a pencil in front of his face. Our friend's head wobbled on his neck like a spinning top losing speed, but followed the pen without getting dizzy. The officer put down his pencil.

"Sir, I want you to walk in a straight line."

Paul put one foot in front of the other like a robot.

The officer was disappointed by the results and looked ready to back up his hunch by getting out the Breathalyzer. The pencil dropped from his hand. Paulie picked it up with the grace of a 13 year-old ballerina and handed it back to the clean-shaven young officer.

"Where are you going?"

"The Upper Peninsula to see friends and family."

"You’re from Michigan?”

"Detroit. Born and raised."

"There's a rest stop five miles ahead." The officer put away his pen. "I suggest you empty the truck of those beer cans and back on the road obey the speed limit."

"Thanks, officer."

Our two vehicles parted ways. I returned to sitting in the front. Paulie started the truck.

"How we get away with that?" Greg asked with relief.

"Because I'm from the Midwest. If it had been one of you, that stop would have led to a different ending." Paulie pulled into the westward flow of traffic and I checked the map. The Michigan stateline was two hours away.

That night we made Detroit. Dinner was at a bar off Michigan Avenue. We chased down coneys, which were hot dogs with beanless chili, down with cold beer. I played the MC5, Iggy, Grand Funk Railroad, and Mitch Ryder on the jukebox. Gregg chatted up the girls. They loved his British accent. I shot eight-ball with the locals. We could have stayed there the rest of our lives, but Paulie crashed out around midnight and we loaded him into the truck. I drove north past Flint and stopped at a small hotel off the highway. We shared a single room. None of us snored that night.

The next afternoon we reached the Great Bear Dunes. Vonelli's family had a beach stack a sand bluff a hundred feet from Lake Michigan. The art dealer took us out on a ChrisCraft. The vast expanse of water rivaled Conan the Barbarian's Vilayet Sea. Three days passed riding dirt bikes off the dunes, swimming, and drinking beer. At the last evening's BBQ Gregg recounted told the story about the Ohio cop to everyone. They shook their heads with disbelief.

"You always were a lucky man," Vonelli's sister said at a BBQ. They had gone to school together.

"Not lucky. That's an old police trick and I was waiting for it."

"What was a trick?" Gregg asked with a burger in his hand.

"Dropping the pen." Paulie smiled in triumph. "Plus I wasn't drunk. I was merely hung-over. Mind you, severely hung-over, but I got over it fast as soon asI saw the flashing lights."

We toasted his escape and finished the night watching the stars revolve over the Earth.

The following morning we said our goodbyes.

"Tell Jim I said hello." Vonelli was heading back to Paris. The auctions at the Hotel Drouot opened in less than two weeks. He was flying out of Detroit in the afternoon.

"I hope I catch him." Paulie was speaking about his friend in the Upper Peninsula. "He might have left for California, but his father will be happy to see us."

We hugged the rest of the Vonelli clan. They were heading south to Florida. Paulie pointed the pick-up north. I sat in the back of the truck. The midday heat zapped my strength and I passed out in the back of the truck short of Petrowsky.

The Ford's tires hummed over the Straits of Mackinac Bridge. I woke up to the spectacle of two lakes meeting underneath us. The temperature had dropped into the 70s. and I sat up in the back to breathe in the boreal air. Canada was less than a hundred miles away.

Paulie drove for another 15 minutes and pulled off Route 2 somewhere north of St. Ignace. We slept in the back of the truck and rose with the misty dawn. Paulie bought breakfast from an Epoulette diner.

"I know these." Gregg held the hot meat pastie up in his hand.

"They're a relic from the Welsh miners working mineral deposits in the mid-1800s." Paulie bit into his. Flakes of crust scattered over his lap. "They remind me of my youth. Back in the 50s my father would drive up here in the summer. We went ice fishing in the winter. The UP was a paradise back then. Jobs, nature, and good people. Most of them gone since the mines closed. Now all you got are old Finns to stubborn to quit the land."

"Same as the State of Maine." I had been brought outside of Portland as a child. All the real jobs had headed south in the 1950s.

"Except the Upper Peninsula has a population density of 10 people per square mile. It's deserted."

Paulie wasn't kidding about the desolation.

I hadn’t seen more than three people in a clump the entire morning. The stocky men and woman resembled each other in their jeans and flannel shirts topped by a baseball cap. Few cars traveled Route 2's long straightways bordered by dense pine forests.

We pulled into Fire Lake around 3.

Paulie beeped the horn before an old farm house, whose walls had been weathered by many winters and the two-story structure leaned away from the prevailing wind. A herd of cows grazed in a fenced field. One cow stood by itself. It was not the bull.

Our host limped into the afternoon sunlight. Uvo was in his 50s. He greeted us with a firm handshake and a yellow smile. He lit an unfiltered Camel.

"Where's everyone?" Paulie’s scratched at his beard. It was more salt than pepper.

"Down at the lake fishing, but Jim left for Ann Arbor two days ago, eh."

"Sorry, I missed him." Paulie had attended U Michigan with Uvo's second son. Both were artists.

He tugged on the cigarette and exhaled a flume of smoke. "You boys fish?"

"Not much fishing in New York." Gregg regarded Uvo, as if he were a Norman Rockwell painting.

"No, guess they don't like to swim in concrete."

The afternoon sky that filled with high clouds from the north. The summer was fading fast and autumn was ready to take its place. Uvo held a pair of axes in this hands.

"Going to get cold tonight, eh. Call me old fashioned, but I believe in the work ethic. You work. You eat. No work. No eat."

The Londoner was no farmer and I was no Paul Bunyan, but we took the axes and laid into the wood.

Both of us had blisters on our hands within minutes, but as an Englishman Gregg believed in doing a host’s bidding and we hacked logs into firewood, while Paulie and Uvo drank Schlitz beer. They were examining Paulie's 45 and the shotgun. Beer cans floated in a metal tub.

"I see you guys are into the real hard work." Gregg attached no small amount of sarcasm to this statement.

"It may look like we’re doing nothing, but nothing is hard work to do when other people are working hard." Uvo sucked at a tooth. He was missing one in the front.

"We'll be joining you soon enough." I swung the ax with wild abandon. The two men backed away from us. Hard work was dangerous to someone not used to it.

Gregg and I finished our task in a sweat and joined the other two. He slung the ax over his shoulder, as if he graduated from a dude logging camp. Uvo surveyed the woodpile.

"Not bad for trolls, eh."

"Trolls?" I had been called many things in my life, but never a troll.

"Trolls is the Yopper euphemism for people coming from unda the bridge," Paulie explained, as he handed us two cans of Schlitz. The beer that made Milwaukee famous was unavailable in New York.

"I used to drink these as a kid." The gusto of the crisp cold beer brought back memories of my youth on the South Shore of Boston.

"American beer." Gregg took a swig. "The only thing closer to water is a canoe."

"At least we drink our beer cold." I had been in England. "Your beer is warm piss."

"But strong.”

"Strong beer is good." Uvo nodded his approval.

"At least Schlitz isn’t Bud." Gregg emptied his beer and Uvo handed him another from the icy tub.

I noticed a serious bruise on his forearm. The farmer glanced over to the single cow in the pasture. “Cow butted me, eh. They can get nasty this time of the year. You boys feel like a sauna."

"Sauna?" I lived next door to the Russian Baths in the East Village. Hot steam was the cure for aches, pains, and hang-overs.

"Yes, the UP wouldn’t be the Up with saunas. Most of us that haven't left are Finnish. We don’t like the hot weather, but love the sauna. It’s good for you." Uvo pointed to a traditional Scandinavian steam room next to the barn. "I build that a year after finishing my house. I got it ready for us. Are you ready for it?"

The old man stripped off his clothing and waved for us to join him inside the sauna. The three of us were naked seconds later and entered the low-ceiling hut. The gnarled farmer threw water on the glowing stones. Steam furled from the rocks and the temperature rose close to the surface of Venus.

"Good to see new faces up here, eh. Fire Lake is a long way from anywhere. Most of the people in town are tired of seeing each other. They get crabby as a bear coming out of hibernation, but nothing gets them together faster than talk of a barbecue, so if you want to see people, we'll have a barbecue."

"Fresh meat too." Paulie's was a total carnivore, although his blood pressure was that of a 300-pound man. He ate steak four times a week. The waiters at the Homestead Steak House on 9th Avenue knew him by name.

"Y-up." Tinges of Finnish clung to Uvo's accent. He scratched his buzzcut then rubbed his unshaven face. "Go shot a cow after we’re done."

Michigan "Shoot a cow?" I was a meat-eater, but my meat came from a supermarket. I wiped the sweat from my face with an old towel.

"Would rather he kill it with an ax?" Gregg joked from the corner.

“That might get messy."

“Why you killing a cow?” The English literary agent looked like a soggy mummy under his wrap of towels.

"I kill one cow every fall." Uvo stated matter-of-fact. "Keeps me in meat until the spring. The way snow falls up here you never know when you can re-up supplies."

"Winters are hard this far north.” Paulie spoke from experience. "200 inches of snow are the norm. A few communities had recorded annual snowfalls nearing twenty feet."

"I know killing a cow ain't sport, eh. Heck, I known this cow all its life. I fed it as a calf." Uvo seemed sad about the upcoming culling of his herd. "Strange, but the other cows sense what's going to happen."

"You think they tell each other?" Gregg hailed from London. The only cows in that city arrived dead at the Smithfield Market for slicing into steaks and grinding into hamburger.

"Dunno. Cows are funny, eh." Uvo stropped the edge of an old straight-razor to the sharpness of an assassin’s blade and stroked the grizzle from his face with an economy of motion.

"You feel like a shave?"

"No place better than a sauna." Uvo re-stropped the edge. My beard was scrapped from my face without a nick. Uvo pointed to Paulie and Gregg. They shook their heads.

"What are you boys religion?" Uvo didn’t wait for an answer and said, "Because up here on the Upper Peninsula we take the Word of God for truth."

"I'm okay with whatever you believe." I was a confirmed atheist, but kept my devout non-belief to myself.

"In da beginning dere was nuttin." Uvo's accent thickened to a nearly indecipherable patois, “Den on the first day God created da Upper Peninsula. On the second day He created da partridge, da deer, da bear, da fish, and the ducks. On da third day He said "Let dere be Yoopers to roam da Upper Peninsula". On the forth day He created da udder world down below. On the fifth day He said "Let there be trolls to live in the world down below". On the sixth day He created da bridge so da trolls would have a way to get to heaven. God saw it was good and on da seventh day, He went Huntin and that works as the Word of God on the UP."

"Works for me." I laughed relieved he wasn't a Bible thumper.

"Time for more beer." Uvo led us from the sauna. We toasted his version of Genesis with a cold Schlitz and raised our cans to the sky. The sunlight dried our naked flesh. The wind lipped up the silver bottom of the leaves. Uvo looked over his shoulder to the large pasture. The herd of cows were standing against the fence. The one cow was in the distance.

"That the one?" Gregg lifted his head from a nod. He was handsome in a desperate way.

"Weird, eh?" Uvo reached into the bucket and pulled out four more beers. They were going fast. "They shun that one like killing might be contagious."

Death awaited all creatures. We drank our beer. Uvo saved the empties for target shooting. The cows stared at us like we were holding a vote to change the sacrifice.

"Funny how they'll protect themselves from other animals but not man." Gregg aimed a finger at the distant cow. It moped in protest. "That's because they trust us."

"Trust?" Uvo laughed with a farmer’s certitude. "Cows ain't no one's friend and nuttins as dumb as a cow tied to a post, eh. How you think I got this black and blue on my arm."

"The lone cow." Paulie was sitting on a log. His legs were thin. The sculptor needed more exercise.

"Yup that's the one." Uvo walked over to the gate. He lifted his fingers to his mouth. A long whistle got the attention of the solitary cow. The others huddled closer to the fence. The cow shook his head.

Uvo whistled again and then banged the grain bin. Corn husk dust misted a halo around the farmer's head. The cow meandered to the gate. Uvo slipped a noose over its head. Long scars crisscrossed the haunches. Something wild had had at it. Uvo led the beast to a trellis constructed of thick logs. A pulley hung from the beam. The naked farmer fed the lead line through the pulley and hauled the cow's head upward.

Uvo returned to us. The other cows scattered over the pasture to munch the long summer grass. Gregg was sprawled against the sauna wall. The heat and the beer had taken its toll on the Englishman. It wasn't a pretty sight.

"Something wrong with that troll. I don’t want no one dying on my farm, eh."

"I’ll take care of him."

“You a doctor?"

"No, but I know what to do, my grandfather was a doctor in the First World War." I went into the sauna and came out with a bucket of icy water. I emptied the contents over Greg. The Englishman sputtered to life. Uvo and Paulie laughed as only naked men can laugh.

Hands over their genitals.

Gregg wasn't too happy with the sudden reveille, but understood that he had violated his guest privileges.

"Thanks for the wake-up call."

"No problem."

"I have some calls to make and that cow has a date with a Winchester." Uvo walked over to his house. He entered by the front door. The cow in the rear mooed our surrender. We followed Uvo’s path across the lawn. I went to my room. It was on the second-floor. The windows overlooked the cow. I stuck wet tissue in my ears waiting for the killing shot.

Uvo and Paul exited from the house. They were still naked. Uvo held a Winchester rifle. Paul had his 45. The cow mooed once and Uvo stuck the rifle muzzle in its ear. One bullet buckled its legs. Paul gave the coup de grace.

The killing took less than ten seconds.

Uvo and Paul tugged on the rope around the dead cow’s neck. The creature was ready for slaughter. I lay on the bed. The mattress was old. The sheets smelled of the seasons. I fell asleep in a minute.

I woke to the sound of people talking and the smell of sizzling steak. I got out of bed and went to the window. Meat was burning on the grill. Ten people were drinking beer; Paulie, Uvo, Grieg, three women and four men. Everyone was wearing the UP uniforms. The only way I could identify Uvo was by his red cap.

I dressed in the uniform and joined the party.

Paulie's truck was parked next to the house. The tape deck played garage music. Gregg entertained the congregation with tales of Oxford. I had heard them before, but he was a good storyteller and I laughed along with the other guests. We drank beer and ate steak. Blood dripped from our lips. The meat went well with the potato sausage and cudighi, a spicy Italian meat.

"Why are we here?" I asked Gregg with a beer in my hand. It was the only thing familiar to me.

"Because we didn't want to be in New York."

"But here?" The sky was ablaze with the sparks drifting up from the fire.

"I don't have a clue." Gregg had been quick to accept the seduction of the Upper Peninsula. We were adrift from the world. Our aluminum beer cans clanked cheaply together. "But I'm feeling very UP."

One of the women had brought a nisu, a cardamom-flavored sweet bread. Another came with juustoa or spueaky cheese and sauna makkara, a Finnish bologna. It was good eating. The sun went down quick and the stars ruled the cosmos.

Uvo gathered the empties and placed them on a shot-up fence post 50 feet from the grill. Paulie placed his 45 on the table with a box of ammo.

"You're up." Uvo put the gun in my hand.

"Blast away." Paulie was completely at home.

The 45 was heavy. I pointed it at the target and pulled the trigger fast and smooth. My third shot tore into a beer can. I scored with the fifth and seventh.

"Not bad shooting for a Troll." Uvo took my smoking gun from my hand.

We shot the rest of the ammo box in ten minutes. Only two of the beer cans survived the onslaught. Paulie put his pistol under the seat of his pick-up and I sat on the porch.

"Good steak, eh?" Uvo was aglow with beer. His good feeling was shared by his friends. They smiled broader when the stereo played DIRTY WATER.

“Delicious.” Better than anything from the Homestead. "But I meant to ask you. What were those scars on that cow."

“Bear, eh." The nisu woman answered my question. Paulie was flirting with the scrawny 40ish brunette. She wanted to dance to LOUIE LOUIE playing on the pick-up's stereo. They did the two-step.

"Yup, a bear attack that cow last spring. I shot it dead."

"Don't say that too loud, eh." The woman glanced around the guests. "Game warden hear that and Uvo has a big fine."

"Maybe $2000 for out of season." Uvo popped open another beer.

“But it was attacking your cow."

"I understand." Bears in Maine roamed the blueberry patches for a sweet treat. The police warned hikers to stay away from the patches. "Last summer in Maine I spotted two black bears scavenging a moose carcass across a river. Both studied me, as if I were food."

"Bears don't eat people. We taste like shit, unless they're hungry. Guess that bear was hungry. I shot him with that Winchester, eh."

"The same one you killed the cow with?"

"Ain't got another."

"That almost like the scene in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA where Lawrence has to shot the man that he saved from the desert in order to seal the alliance of another tribe of Arabs."

"That's just a movie. Up here a bear is a bear. A dead bear weven moreso. Uvo called me up and I came over with my backhoe." A longhaired farmer nodded his head in remembrance of that day. "Big hole, eh."

"Yup." A chorus joined by the other locals.

"That cow was a little crazy after that. Always running around the pasture and scaring the other cows. Sorry it had to go, but crazy cows are bad for milk."

"Yup." Another round of 'yups' all around. Even me.

"Bear meat tastes like pork. Best are the legs and loin." I had eaten some in Maine.

"Bears too strong for me. Too much grease." Uvo made a face.

"Plus they have trichinosis." Paul's date made a face. "Bears are no good eating. Not like steak."

"Yup."

Gregg and I joined the chant of yups, because after the fifth beer we all spoke the language of beer in the land of bears.

It was a language common to everywhere forgotten by the rest of the world.

And few places were more forgotten than the Upper Peninsula.

It was good to be away from New York.

A Walk In The Douglas Forest

Douglas, Alaska lies across the Gastineau Channel from Juneau underneath Mt. Douglas.

Originally a staging ground of the Auke and Taru people for battles against rival tribes, the Treadwell and Douglas townships served the miners of the Juneau gold fields. The population grew to 1722 at the turn of the 20th Century.

An explosion ripped through the mines in 1910. The Serbians and Greeks left Douglas to serve in WWI. The town suffered further population loss and surrendered civilizaton to the wilderness.