Walking in West Milford

            I finished the month of May having gone hiking each and every day of the month, a first for me. Then, I quickly seemed to have put out my back, or otherwise hurt it this week, and so the hikes have stopped for now.

            Still, I am trying to be active, and so have been going for walks. I went for a nice long walk a couple of days ago along a canal.

            Yesterday, I went for a walk in West Milford, over by the high school and junior high school, and a funny thing happened. It was afternoon, and the sky was overcast. Clouds seemed to be threatening yet more rain (but I like rain), and it seemed maybe that I had better go for a walk quickly, before it started to downpour. So, I went, wondering if I should bring a cap or raincoat or something.

            On the way, there, I saw three bears. One large one, and two smaller ones (although they were not really all that small). Pretty sure they were mother and cubs, although the cubs are probably fast approaching the age where they will be old enough to go off on their own, as adults.

            They were walking around in the woods. The first one I saw was one of the cubs. It was over on my left, and he or she looked right at me, hesitating, until it saw that I crossed the street and passed it, then crossed the street itself, to the other side of the woods.

I kept watching it, until a car driving by stopped. I knew they were stopping because they had seen the bear cross the street, but in fact, they were looking in the opposite direction. At that point, I saw two more bears in the woods on the side where that first bear had been before crossing the street. One was bigger, presumably the mother, and the other smaller – about the same size as the one that had crossed the street. They were walking around, in no particular rush.

The lady driving offered me a ride, to make sure I could get past safely, but I told her I'd be okay. I was already almost in the clearing in the woods, near the schools, and wanted to get some exercise, after all.

My walk continued, and the day grew to be beautiful. It was neither too hot nor too cold, and the sun began to shine brightly by the time I got to the high school. Gorgeous weather, really. Plus, I was feeling upbeat, having seen the bears – the seventh time this year I have had encounters with bears (well, at least seen bears, if not quite precisely encountered them).

About twenty minutes later, feeling pretty happy, I made way for a runner in the woods just before another clearing by a small pond, and almost walked right past a stone that seemed a little odd. When I looked more closely, it proved to be a turtle.

So, I waited, standing behind it so it would not see me, wanting to see the turtle come out. It did, slowly, and then began to turn in the direction of the pond. It got scared when I moved (damn mosquitoes!), and then started up again a couple of minutes after that.

It went to the edge of a fall, which in terms of it's size would have been more like a cliff for us. Mentally, I was trying to urge it to be careful, until it disappeared out of sight, and this was accompanied by what sounded like rocks crashing into one another.

I rushed over, and at first, did not see it. Then, I noticed the turtle's shell, but it looked different, somehow. I could not quite place it. Nothing happened for a few minutes.

At this point, I was feeling a bit guilty, and wondered if it had been seriously hurt, or maybe even killed, after such a fall. I did not believe so, but perhaps that was the sense of guilt and wishful thinking, rather than reality. So, I stepped down to the bottom of this little "cliff" for the turtle, and instantly, it slid farther down, embedded within rocks as it was. So, it must be alive, although I had not actually seen movement.

I went back up, not wanting to disturb it more than I already had. But again, a long period of time passed, and nothing happened.

Before long, it occurred to me why the shell looked different: it was upside down. The turtle had not moved because it could not move.

So, I climbed back down, and found some relatively sturdy sticks, and flipped it back, right side up. This was rocky ground, and it seemed that the turtle would not be able to traverse this. Yet, it did amazingly well, proving to be a quite capable climber. It was also surprisingly fast – not enough to beat a hare in a race, to be sure (you try and move fast while moving the equivalent of a boulder on your back), but much quicker than I had expected it to be.

It reached the concrete bottom of a miniature dam, and once it was in water, it seemed revived. It climbed up the wall – another thing that I would never guessed it would have been capable of, and did so in a surprisingly quick period, and with seeming ease.

It finally reached the top, and rushed back towards the pond, scaring a frog along the way.

I saw it only one more time, maybe a minute or so afterwards, as it reached for some plants submerged under water. It seemed like it was okay, and I felt a whole lot better, and went on my merry way.

Funny thing, though. When it was on the bottom of that miniature dam wall, it stopped and seemed to look up at me, assess me. There was only one more instance when it went back in it's shell (again, damn mosquitoes!). But other than that one quick movement, it seemed no longer afraid.

So, on my way back, I encountered the bears yet again. At first, it was just invisible rustling from the woods. But when I stopped and tired to get a closer look, I caught a few glimpses. Once again, more than one bear. It seems like it was the two cubs, but mother bear was nowhere to be seen. One wanted to cross the road, but upon seeing me, fell back a bit. Maybe it is true what I have been told, they are at least as scared of us as we are of them.

A jogger was approaching on the side of the road close to the bears, and I held out my hand, signaling for her to stop, and warned her. She was probably suspicious, because she seemed disinterested, mostly. She jogged on, but about one hundred feet farther up, seemed startled by something, and turned back towards me. When I looked in the direction of what had startled her, I saw the bear, walking along the edge of the road, not even five feet in the woods.

About maybe one hundred yards up or so, it finally crossed the road, followed maybe a minute or so later by the other bear. I watched them until they disappeared, and felt truly privileged, although I was listening intently again for more such rustling noises and, in fact, heard more.

But these proved to be for a deer. I had heard two or so cars in a row beeping, so it was apparent that something was on the road or near it up ahead, but as of yet, I could not see it.

When I saw it, it was on a small path that cut across from the one road I was walking along, to another one, a fairly large artery locally. The deer was frozen in place right in the middle of the path and sprinted full speed into the woods finally, as I approached.

Such a wonderful little walk. I must have done that walk hundreds of times, literally, since I was a kid, but never saw such a rich diversity and abundance of wildlife encounters before! Amazing!