Goldy Larches and the Three Bears

On doing the next best thing to take care of ourselves.

I often mistake inanimate bits of nature for animals on the trail – especially the predatory variety of wildlife. A stump is a cougar. A scorched log is a bear. A stick is a rattlesnake.

But on our way out from traversing the golden larch-flooded, alpine lake wonderland of the Enchantments, my eyes did not deceive me: there was a bear perched on a pile of rocks around the bend. A heartbreakingly adorable, irresistibly cuddle-able, uncontrollably fluffy baby bear, just a dozen yards away.

With no mama in sight.

“Holy shit!” I whisper-hollered to my friend Amy, who was hiking right behind me. I thrust my arm out like a traffic barrier to stop her from going any further. “Look! A baby bear!”

She cooed like you do in the face of undeniable cuteness and then turned to me, her voice dropping several octaves as she said what I was thinking: “Where is his mom?”

Her words were slow and cautious. My heartrate was jacked and spiking higher by the second.

Bear encounters are not generally a source of concern in trail outings – when you run into them roaming through the woods or feasting on berries in a meadow, they easily scamper away with a loud “hey bear!” or two – except when you get between a mom and her babies. That’s a situation you most definitely want to avoid and one that can result in a very harrowing confrontation with a very protective mama. For all we knew, that was the case as we stood halted in the middle of the trail, watching the lone cub teeter atop a boulder without any adult supervision.

We heard our boyfriends Ian and Caleb catching up to us and caught them up on the prickly predicament.

The group started weighing our various options. We’re all quite experienced in backcountry problem-solving, but without any sign of mom, there was no path forward that offered a 100 percent guarantee of things going exactly right. And, considering we were many hours hours into a point-to-point hike, with sunset rapidly approaching, the path back wasn’t a swell option, either. We stood in the middle of the trail, talking circles around what to do.

It was a frustrating situation that I’ve found myself in a lot these past few months: frozen in the face of no Very Best Decision That Will Magically Solve A Very Big Thing™.

It happened this week – when I woke up feeling overwhelmed by, well, everything. Grief. Depression. Pandemic. The darkest days of winter. All of it. And it felt impossible to tackle the day ahead while staring down the barrel of so much shitty shit. So impossible that I just stayed in bed – rotating between staring at my beige ceiling and doom-scrolling twitter. The idea of confronting all of it felt akin to being thrown into a wrestling ring to take on a gang of angry alligators. Because how do you even begin to address such immense stress and emotional crap? I felt like I had better odds of winning a gold medal in Olympic figure skating than doing something that would make it all feel better and more manageable.

When you go through a big loss, a lot of people will offer you the very kind, very well-intentioned advice to “take care of yourself,” but it’s hard to hear that and not just laugh it off as totally impractical guidance. Because how? How do you even begin to take care of yourself when it feels like your entire world has shattered into one billion totally unrecognizable splinters? The idea of “taking care of yourself” feels wildly unachievable when you know nothing on this earth can take away your pain and make anything feel better.

But a thing I’ve learned to think about when enduring grief (or depression or pandemic or fill-in-the-blank-life-stress-from-this-dumpster-fire-year), is to not ask: how can I take care of all of this. To not get bogged down thinking about how to snap my fingers and make life feel good again in those most difficult stretches. Because there’s usually not a Very Best Decision That Will Magically Solve A Very Big Thing™ (or three). And trying to find one in the face of all-consuming sadness and stress and uncertainty can trap us in an unending labyrinth of defeat.

I’ve found that a more manageable thing to consider is: What’s the next best thing I can do to take care of myself? What’s a small thing I can do to make this hard day just a little bit easier to get through?

My answers vary when I ask myself that question. Sometimes I need to curl up under my flannel comforter with a good book. Sometimes I need to meet a friend for a run so I can get caught up in conversation and connection and my feet churning beneath me. Sometimes I need to play with my extra silly puppy and laugh at what a ridiculous little pickle he is.

Maybe your answer to this question would be to go for a long walk with a good friend, or to do your laundry while baking chocolate chip cookies, or to schedule an hour with your wise therapist. But there is probably always at least one small way you can take care of yourself when you’re struggling with a very big thing or three. And identifying a loving thing we can do for ourselves – and doing it – can help. Even if it’s just a teeny-tiny thing, even if it doesn’t even scratch the surface of tackling that daunting pile of life shit.

On my extra overwhelming day this week, I remembered that I should ask myself this question. And doing that got me out of bed and into the woods for a heart-pumping run. That’s often my answer. To move my body outdoors.

As I type this little story for you, I still feel overwhelmed by grief and depression and pandemic and life, but I also know that I’ve done little things to give myself a little love and TLC to get through a hard week. And that might not solve everything, but it does count for something.

As we stood in the middle of that trail in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, trying to decide what to about the baby bear around the bend, we realized we had to stop trying to make a decision with a 100 percent guarantee of solving the big problem before us. Because just like life, the wilderness generally does not work like that.

But when we asked ourselves: what is the next best thing we could do in the face of this very big thing, we had some well-reasoned action steps to help us move forward: scan the river below the trail for mom, move as a pack to appear real big, make lots of noise to let mom know we were approaching, keep looking for signs of protective parents.

After settling on this plan, we nervously rounded the corner as a blob of hikers, staring down the thick bushes for a bear sitting in the woods.

We belted out The Bare Necessities as we shuffled forward, to give mama a very off-key notice that we were in her neighborhood. And after a bunch of cautious, warbling steps, we looked up the stone-covered slope and spotted mom, who was perched on a log, a few dozen feet up the rocky hillside, watching us while her two cubs played with each other, oblivious to the humans below.

And for a few magical moments, we coexisted in that wild space. Mom was calm and content to know exactly where we were and to see us keeping our distance from her precious cubs. And we were thrilled with the chance to take a deep breath from our safe oasis on the trail and spend a few quiet moments admiring the three bears, feeling like our small decisions in the face of a very big thing were just right.