TALES OF THE BEAR. Winter

Tales of the Bear Winter How about dropping everything and going to the Biestade mountains? Can be heard here and there. Somewhere out there in the big cities, in the big blocks of flats, people sometimes talk to each other about how they have had enough of the city and they dream of getting away, of going to the Biestade mountains. Winter, my dears, behind me is an ocean of forests, clearings, mountains, valleys, and there are animals living in these forests. Of course, herbivores such as roe deer, red deer, or the dignified wizards. But predators also live in these forests, from the smallest ones like wild cats to lynxes, wolves, and what attracts us the most here, bears, the dangerous Biestade bears. When the vast majority of bears in the Biestade and Carpathian mountains are sleeping somewhere cosily in ready-made lairs, but before they can get to sleep, they are forced to look for this cosy place. It is worth knowing how such a lair is created. Nothing happens by accident here, usually they are old trees, in this case an old fir tree, well over a hundred years old, which was once damaged somewhere here in the hollow part. First, insects penetrate the wood, followed by birds that peck at the wood, infecting it with fungi and causing its destruction. This takes years, it takes 50, 70, sometimes 80 years for the inside to decay and for the completely decomposed wood to fall out. And after some time, a bear looking for a cosy den will come and use its paw, and with its massive claws will tear out the rest of the dead matter from the inside of this ancient fir tree, as well as stones and soil, somewhere here from the root influxes, and prepare a cosy, large, comfortable dwelling for the winter. And here, in a place where the Solinka and Vetlinka rivers murmur below, because this is where they meet, what could be better than falling asleep listening to the sound of the Biestade rivers? It is worth knowing that in winter, in January or early February, a new generation of bears is born in the Biestade mountains. Inside the warm, cosy layers, the female bears give birth to one to four cubs. These little ones, weighing just over 200 grams, naked and blind, snuggle up in their mother's warm fur after birth, suckle on her breasts and feed on her nutritious milk, which has a fat content of around 38%. That's how quickly they grow, or rather how quickly they swell. So, what happens inside the layer? Well, unfortunately, we don't know if they all survive, or if only some of the newborn bears survive. It's one of nature's hidden secrets. We later see them, when they are already grown up, coming out of the layer, cuddly, nice teddy bears, running after the mother bear, but we do not know what happened before. Well, in the human world, once a person has obtained or earned their flat or built a house, they become attached to that place and would like to spend almost their entire life there, unless fate throws them somewhere else and they have to change that flat. In the world of bears, it is a little different. Here, there are many occasions when they find their home, their place to hibernate. They do not get attached in such a way that they think about returning here in a year's time, that they might improve, fix or renovate something here. Somewhere, by chance, he will find another place to sleep, and there he may spend the next generation, or perhaps spend the winter with these year-old cubs. Sometimes children, and sometimes adults too, sing a song about how the old bears sleep soundly, and it seems to us, or maybe it really feels like that, that when the bear lies down in its layer, all you can hear is the snoring or purring of the old bear, like in the song, or the little bear cubs, or the she-bear. It is not exactly as we imagine it, it is just a slowing down of this life cycle. There are observations that a bear leans out, sticking its head out of the layer. We have observations that a female bear, even when enchanted by the newly fallen first snow, tries to catch these flying snowflakes on its tongue. There are observations that a female bear will lick the water running down the bark of a fir tree. So we have the idea that this dream is so hard and long. Not at all. Bears just lurking in these lodges have to sleep or wait out this difficult winter period. They don't go to sleep because their ears, paws and noses are freezing, but because this is the period when the food base is limited for them. We can easily recognize tracks in the snow. In this case, we have the imprint or track of the female bear's hind paw. A long, large track of a mature bear, quite large. And somewhere over there, the track of the front paw, or the imprint of the front paw, specifically the front left paw. But there are also tracks of those little ones, one-year-old bear cubs. Two paws placed side by side do not even make half the track of a mature bear. Let's not follow these tracks. Let's not check where they went. Let's retreat, because it could be dangerous for us. Tracks or traces, an eternal dilemma. Tracks are everything that remains after a paw, hoof or trotter has been imprinted, while traces are places, as in this case, of feeding, resting or playing. Because it is difficult to say whether this piece of deer bone was used for food or more as an element of play. I think it was more of a play thing, because there is not much you can do with a white bone like this. These birds were feeding here, looking for something to eat, and then they set off across part of the meadow, probably at sunrise, to look at the beautiful panorama of the Biestady mountains and hid somewhere in a grove. Dear friends, remember that not all bears fall asleep. There are some, like this gentleman here, for example, who, while crossing this cliff, slid down on his butt towards this road to walk along a road that had already been cleared of snow. Remember that if you go to the Biestady mountains in winter and you are walking along a narrow, winding, snow-covered forest road, you might encounter a bear, even in winter. Leszek! Oh my God!