The Bears

The Bears Katherine Vondy (bio) Keywords bears, companionship, connection, geography, quarantine, memories, anecdotes AT FIRST JUST ONE or two people watched the bears. Then they shared the bears with some of their friends and the friends started watching the bears. The friends told other friends who told other friends, and friendly acquaintances, and even strangers. These people told other people. After a while, everybody was watching the bears. The bears were not really there. Or actually they were, but only if "there" was Alaska. Not the city where all the bear-watching was happening, which was many of thousands of miles away. The people in the faraway city watched the bears via a webcam that live-streamed a salmon-filled river 24/7. Because there were so many salmon, there were also bears. The bears feasted on the salmon. But sometimes the bears didn't seem interested in the salmon. Sometimes they just sat in the river, letting the rapids foam around their furry shoulders. The people in the faraway city recognized the behavior. It was what they liked to do themselves—at least those who were lucky enough to have access to hot tubs. The bears waded into the river, walked right up to the part where the current was frothiest, and lowered themselves into it, only their necks and heads poking up from the water. They looked relaxed. Comfortable. Nonperformative and un-self-conscious. Presumably the bears did not know about the webcam and were not aware of the hundreds—thousands—of people who found them to be so captivating, just living their normal bear lives in Alaska. We lived in that faraway city and began watching the bears because there was nothing else to do. We could not leave the city. We barely left our apartment. It was a matter of safety. The outside world was unpredictable, dangerous; going into it was ill-advised. We were forced to find other means of relocation, means beyond the physical. The bears gave us that. When we watched the bears, we were with the bears. We felt transported to a distant, pristine place where it was still safe—except, presumably, for those who got in the path of the bears. I came to love the bears and to believe that I could identify specific bears by small, differentiating characteristics that other viewers likely missed: the unique shapes of one's ears, or the way another had a particular [End Page 143] distinct habit of frequently standing up on its hind legs, more than all the other bears. They began to feel familiar. They began to feel like treasured companions. Like friends. It's not that I didn't have human friends, but the human friends were complicated, at least for me. So many thoughts. So many opinions. And even with all the thoughts and opinions, there were still so many things that remained unclear. You have to trust the government, my first friend would say. You can only trust yourself, would say the second. Is this even real life? from the third. Or is it all a trick? A strange, unsettling trick? We agreed it was possible that everything was a trick—but that was wishful thinking, as all evidence indicated we were, indeed, living our real, non-tricked lives. The truth was that we were in the midst of a civil war—one part of our country pitted against the other, violence against one part exacerbating violence against the other part—and the boundaries between the parts were always changing and shifting. It was very conceivable that you could be in your own part one day, then wake up in the same room a week later to discover you were suddenly in the other part, the part that you had previously been at war with. You would have a choice, then: Did you have more faith in history or geography? If you believed in history, if you believed it was important to stay constant and be loyal, a rearrangement of borders meant that you, personally, were now located in a place you should not be located in. You were in the other part of the country, where you did...