Waking the Bear

February bear waits silent in its den, a copious woodrat nest pushed up around its back like a blanket. Outside, snow is falling dizzy with fat flakes twirling in windless air. The bear doesn’t know about the storm. A barometer in its organs, spaces between gut-folds, might register a change in molecules, ozone in the air, atmospheric pressure lifted to let in the clouds, but the mind does not see it, not any more than the brain stem, the reptilian part that instructs the heart to beat. Hibernation is not sleep, not dreaming. It is a closing of every door but the one in and out, breath so gentle it barely moves dusty cobwebs that line the cracks. A life made of sinew and seasons, carcasses scavenged, other bears chased off, and being chased off itself, is settled into the hole it formed, the shape of its body in twigs and old bones, grayed feces, pine cones, bits of cactus with spines bent down. A male will hibernate at the same temperature as a female, not cold to the touch, but not warm, reduced to the simple fact of Ursus. There’s no longing for the rotten logs of summer turned over revealing countless squirming pearls of ant larvae or the scratching post of an old tree. The brain’s cortex with its familiar desires is turned off. Little will wake the bear—a predator, a larger, already woken bear clawing into this den, looking for drowsy meat.