I had the proverbial—I can’t believe my eyes—moment when I drove up the gravel driveway into my yard. In the afternoon heat, at the edge of the blossoming goldenrod, I spied a giant brown mass sprawled out in the shade of the apple trees. 
The Mini jolted forward when I hit the brakes bringing the car to a stop. I studied the foreign mound only 15 yards away from my bumper. As she lay flat on her stomach, I could see her two furry arms stretched out before her gathering fallen apples off the grass. Fearful not to startle my visitor, I slipped the car into drive and inched my way closer, gently pushing the accelerator.
I heard the crunch of fine gravel beneath my tires and kept my eyes locked in her direction sure she would flee. The big brown bear head turned briefly in my direction before returning unfazed to her gathered bushel. A fist size nose dotted her light brown muzzle.
She lounged in the grass, lumbering over her snack for almost 45 minutes as I sat watching. At one point, she stood and stretched and reached her paw towards a lower limb to grab another apple then sauntered across to the far side of the nearby garden boxes. The bear acted as if she owned the place and at that moment, she did. I snapped photos on my cell phone camera from the safety of inside the car.
The very day before, at this exact time of day, I lounged in the hammock at the opposite side of the property. I covered the scratchy nylon weave with a soft tattered quilt and propped myself with pillows and iced chardonnay as I attempted to write in the mid-afternoon heat. My hammock hangs at the edge of our tamed yard at the foot of towering pines that quickly becomes the forest. My husband keeps the buckthorn and briars at bay whacking with his brush hog and chainsaw and mower. We chose to live in Vermont. Our ten field and wooded acres adjacent to 325 open ones.
We are in the wild, but we are not. A mere 15 minutes drive to the center of town and ten minutes to the airport. We live here because I hate curtains and Harry hates traffic, and from at any point in the house, you feel like you are living in the trees.
She was so peaceful I almost felt that I could open the door and walk over to her to take her picture, but in my mind, I quickly wrote the day’s headline and decided against my foolishness.
I’ve learned to live side by side with nature. The snakes that cuddle under the pool heater—they eat the mice, and the spiders that loom in the corner—they eat the mosquitoes. I wake to the cackle of gossipy crows and the screaming chatter of chipmunks. Aside from the bloody curdle of the screech owl and the rangy meow-howl from the infrequent fisher cat most of our wildlife sightings have been limited to turtles and turkeys and the occasional deer. But this is what I see. What lives sheltered in the dense green foliage gives just a hint of the abundance of life around me; a single paw print, a pile of scat, the impression of a prone body compressed into the tall grass.
After a time, my bear friend looks again in my direction then, as if someone was pulling her over-relaxed body from the hammock’s hold, she pushed herself up on all fours. Only then did I realize she was fully grown. She arched her back the way we middle-aged tend to do—as if prodding the body into motion. If she was alarmed by my presence, she didn’t show it. After a final glance in my direction, she idled the few steps towards the raised garden bed ignoring the ripe tomatoes and the yellowing patty pan. She followed the shade line under the weeping willows to the backside of the raspberry bushes. She seemed unimpressed with this year’s meager yield—ambling off across the bone-dry creek and back into the forest.
But our forest is no longer a forest. Just an acre or two in, seven new house sites have been erected, which will force my bear-friend in the opposite direction, down the lower ridgeline along the far side of the compound. With the human development of her home, she is boxed in on all sides. Our side has become her side, and we will welcome her.