I wrote this piece the morning of the summer solstice, sitting out in a secret place at the edge of the field where I like to lay in the sun. Western pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea), blooms around it, near the hazels and little live oaks and drying grasses. The long sun on the resinous flowerheads, and a kind of waking dream I’d had while half asleep the day before, braided themselves into these words, and when the words were done I twisted a little wreath of the everlasting flowers in my hands.
I brought the white circlet and a handful of dark roses to Bear Valley in Point Reyes as a midsummer prayer for the male black bears (Ursus americanus) that have been sighted again this summer (like they were last summer) in Marin County as they try to move back into their ancestral territory. Their lives and loves and habits have shaped the ecosystems here since the beginning of California; the huckleberry and salal woodland just up the hill from me should be full of summer black bears feasting on dark berries. The tule elk on Tomales Point have no truly natural predators now, without grizzly bears.
So, with this little dream-story and midsummer wreath, I pray that the black bears might return to all of their ancestral valleys and forests with their wives and children, protected, safe, and thriving. Forever.