Bearing Witness

Author’s Note: The following events took place more than 50 years ago. It took fifteen years after that to be published in Back Country Living Magazine, and now another 35 years have passed. And much like our protagonist below, here it is again - believe it or not. Enjoy!

Rumor had it that a bear was on the mountain. A chicken farmer in Pauma, they said, had heard a noise one night and went to investigate. Entering the chicken house, he flipped on the florescent light and peered into the darkness. As the tube flickered to life, his stare was returned by a stoic bruin with a chicken in his jaws. Discretion prevailing, the farmer is said to have slowly made his exit, effectively donating the midnight snack to his uninvited guest.

So the story went anyway, and who was I to doubt it. It was told to me by my wife, who heard it from the postmaster at the mountain’s Summit Store, who had it on good authority from the mail driver, who picked it up in conversation at the Valley Center post office about a week before.

I had also heard that a county honor-camp crew, when working off highway 76 near Pauma Creek, had flushed out what they thought to be a bear. And as I recall there was also some mention of a lurking nocturnal creature at the Palomar School Camp in Doane Valley. The mountain was a-buzz.

I guess I didn’t worry about it a lot. I don’t put much stock in extra-natural phenomena since having learned, years ago, that even the renowned Processor Geroge Adamski was actually of questionable repute. The “Professor” worked as a fry cook at the foot of Palomar back in the 1950s. As a kid, I recall seeing the little observatory domes he had built on the knoll overlooking old Cuca Ranch.

I would always ask my mom about them as we drove by, and she would always give the same explanation. It seems the good professor claimed to have been visited by extra terrestrial vehicles (then known as “flying saucers”). Evidently his mission in life was to lecture, for fun and profit, on all manner of wonderful things he had experience during his various jaunts around the galaxy.

He had gained some notoriety from his books on the subject, and enjoyed a small but devoted following. I was always disappointed that I never saw any space ships, although there are still are true believers out there. Just last fall an elderly pilgrim came to the door, and asked me where she could find the original site of the Professor’s space port. I told her it was in Julian.

Adamski’s story is only slightly less credible than the antics of Old Man Doane, the original white settler of what became known as Doane Valley. Looking, and most probably smelling, the part of the crusty homesteader, Doane is remembered today by photos of him in the 1890s; flop hat, overalls, bearded to his navel.

As the story goes, Old George was having trouble with a mountain lion eating his goats. He had invited a friend to stay up all night with him to lay in wait for the big cat. This particular evening was moonless and black. In the wee hours the men surprised the lion in Doane’s crude corral. Doane was shouting as he jumped into the melee. His friend fumbled to light the kerosine lamp, all the while hearing George’s cry “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

But by the time the lamp was lit and his friend had eared back the hammer of his ancient percussion cap rifle, he couldn’t use it. Doane had the big cat by the tail and was swinging him in a circle. Eventually he released his airborne intruder over the split rail fence. The cat landed in a sprawling heap and is said to have never returned.

Anyway, like everything else I hear though the Summit, the “bear” item was duly noted and promptly forgotten. Besides, that spring was an especially busy one. We had a new boarder at our place. Ron was a genuine Arizona cowboy who agreed to put in a season on the ranch in exchange for room and board. He had brought his Arabian gelding with him, and built a little corral out back, with a stall and various equestrian support facilities.

Jet black and a most beautiful animal, Sir Walter was Ron’s pride. Early each morning Ron would picket “Walt” under the apple trees, pounding in a metal stake with sharp blows of a short handled sledge hammer. I recall often hearing this activity well before the sun has crested the eastern tree line. Occasionally I would join Ron for a breakfast of sour dough flapjacks, venison steak (when he had it) and some coffee so strong it would “float a horseshoe.” To this day I still believe he had a secret stash of weeks-old coffee in a can somewhere and would slip it into my mug while having himself the fresh brew.

So as payment in kind, I asked Ron to join me one evening for supper. Nothing fancy, I think we bar-be-cued steaks over oak bark coals. As the late afternoon faded into the darkness, our customary evening conversation revolved around a mixture of mutual admiration for our unique mountain life style and philosophical speculation as to what truly constituted “nature.”

Ron’s conviction was that man’s incessant terrestrial manipulation resulted in the unnatural degradation of the planet. And I would counter that if homo sapiens can do it, then it is pretty much as natural as anything else that goes on.

Along about midnight, we cashed it in, with Ron heading back to his room in the main house. After picking up the kitchen, I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the little string on the ancient light fixture overhead, extinguishing the bare bulb’s electric glare. But as the little chain clinked against the glass orb, hurried foot steps announced someone behind me.

“Git yer gun, somethin’s after Walt!” The sense of urgency in Ron’s voice gave me the creeps. I fumbled around for my boots and grabbed my double barreled shotgun, propped up behind the kitchen door. By the time I dropped a couple of rounds into the breach and headed out the door, Ron had disappeared into the night.

Looking back on it I must have thought of Old Man Doane. But instead of a lantern, I carried a decrepit metal flashlight in one hand and held the twelve gauge by the stock, breach open, in the other. I stumbled around the building and out to the apple orchard, the flashlight’s sickly orange glow barely illuminated the tall grass at my feet. About the time I looked up for Ron, he suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

“I think Walt’s under the trees.” He spoke softly looking over his shoulder. My light caught something moving toward us. Ron turned around and reaching out. Grabbing Walt’s halter he led the horse into the light. Sir Walter nickered and pawed the ground lightly. The flashlight’s weak glow shimmered off the animal’s chest. Something wasn’t right.

“Blood.” Ron’s voice was barley audible. He hunched down to inspect what was revealed to be a series of gashes running horizontally across the horse's chest. Below, blades of grass were streaked with dark crimson from rivulets of life dribbling down his right fetlock.

“Did something get him?” I asked stupidly. Ron just stood up and moved toward the corral just recently vacated by his wounded steed.

“Where you going now?” I whispered as Ron disappeared. Sir Walter stood motionless. Great, I thought - just leave me here with the slasher victim. The light flickered as I trotted to catch up with Ron. He was standing at the corral gate, one of those loose three-strand wire affairs, which is stretched between fence posts and held in place with wire loops. It now laid torn and twisted in the weeds, suggesting that something big had gone through it.

We noticed movement across the corral. I looked around to check our escape route. Walt was still standing perfectly still where we had left him, his ears cocked forward, his big dark eyes shinning in the night. At that instant there was an explosive crash as something retreated back into the brush. Ron and I waited a few moments, then cautiously walked around the corral as my fading light darted nervously about. On the opposite side we scanned the dirt for tracks.

And there they were, as big as my open hand. A bear had been at the corral fence. At this point Ron finally decided to fill me in. It seems that upon leaving my place he had heard some commotion out by the corral, and walked out there to investigate. As he approached, he saw a dark form standing erect just outside the fence. Sir Walter was alternately charging and fleeing the form, which took a swipe at the air with each advance. We later assumed they and been just playing, or something like that.

The action must have gotten to be too much for Walt though, for it seems he got excited enough to run right though the wire gate, shredding his chest in the process. By that time, Ron had rousted me out and we were returning with my anemic flashlight leading the way. The bear had observed us for a time and then taken off into the night.

I regret now that I didn’t make some plaster casts of those big paw prints. Palomar hasn’t had bears since before the turn of the (last) century. According to the old folks, the early settlers had killed them off pretty quickly. But I’m told that into the 1940s you could still see a tree that a huge grizzly had used as a scratching post.

What was a bear doing up on the mountain after all these years?

It seems that during the 1930s the forest service had re-introduced some dozen black bears into the San Bernardino Mountains up north, as an attempt to establish a breeding population after decades of localized extinction. Our visitor must have been an offspring of that group. Apparently he had traveled the better part of a hundred miles southward to Pauma Valley. That led him up onto the mountain via Pauma Creek and then on to Doane Valley, pausing for snacks along the way.

We later learned that our big furry friend had subsequently wandered eastward down the mountain. He was spotted near the honor-camp north of Lake Henshaw. He then must have moseyed through the Warner’s area, and possibly Ranchita, ending up on Vulcan Mountain.

There he was shot and killed, ironically enough, by a shepherd under contract to the same forest service that brought the bears back so long ago. It seems the shepherd was there to protect goats grazing on a newly planted “fuel modification” project, then underway in the area.

Certainly a long and winding road for the big fella. An impromptu and on-the-spot autopsy reveled that he was pretty much starving, with little more than a hair ball in his stomach.

Well that’s the story I heard at the Summit, anyway.