collision with ursus americanus

good morning ~

(click the link / highway sunset to listen)

My Big Breakcollision with ursus americanus

today’s track is one long unfurling synth drone - - it just goes

hey, opening the books again on doing Personal Tone Zones - - one-of-one custom audio recordings captured according to your specifications. Many of you have commissioned these before and I haven’t had much time for them lately, but I’m happy to be offering the service again now - - they’re popular as gifts this time of year, if you wanna get one I’d go get one now - -

by the way, before we get too far into it - I am doing just fine. Totally uninjured and just a little shaken up in the heart, I can handle it.

I wanted so badly to cope with loud music and exertion and psychoactive chemicals and so I piloted my Comfortable Runabout Vehicle down the driveway and pulled eastward onto the state highway. There was a rave promised and plus I was on the guest list, perhaps the night could be a cool one. As I came up to speed, I noticed that the local NPR affiliate station was playing some uncharacteristically cool music - a live recording of Nico moaning and playing the harmonium, something I had never heard before. Shortly after the on air host promised some more interesting music - and not five minutes away from my house - something terrible happened. A crack, one mound of thunder roiling through the cabin, violent impact, the frame of my car shook but nevertheless continued down the road at speed, warning lights leaping up into illumination and a horrific blubber from the right front wheel. It occurred to me slowly that I must have hit something, though I saw nothing in the road and nothing in the rearview. It then occurred to me that I should probably pull into the next available area, which is how I found myself standing in the rain in the empty parking lot of the burned down steakhouse, gawking helplessly at auto mayhem that didn't yet make sense to me.

The car's engine bravely continued running so over the phone Gracelee encouraged me to try and get it home. The hazard light drive right back up the road seemed almost normal except for that horrible noise coming from the right wheel. Well, whatever, I got it into our driveway and we shined a flashlight on it. During the first wave of panic I kept imagining that I had hit some kind of boulder though I knew that didn't really make sense. When the first blush of logic came back to me I started assuming it had been a deer - happens all the time out here, plus I had a close encounter with a leaping doe at 3am on my way back from Connecticut a couple of weeks ago. But then the motion sensor driveway light blinked on, revealing some irrefutable evidence - a shock of glistening black fur caught in the jagged gap where the metal had sheared. Somehow I had clipped a black bear at 55 miles per hour, a creature never seen by me in the moments before collision or on the drive back. Perhaps it scampered back down to the creek.

A few days later still totally unsure if the car can be salvaged I happened to catch a short piece on All Things Considered - last week a famous and beloved grizzly known as 399, a well-documented mother of 18 cubs who roamed Grand Teton National Park and was the subject of a children's book in 2020, was struck and killed by a vehicle. She was one of the oldest observed reproducing grizzlies and she came to represent wildness and splendor to many in her 28 years of life. But it's a strange dynamic - her willingness to be within lens range of human beings over the years allowed her to become an inspirational symbol. That same ease near footpaths and roadways ultimately led to her demise - she, too, was in the road, taken out in an instant by a careening death machine, then eulogized fondly in public media.

It felt strange that a car accident along the lines of the one I had experienced was - unbeknownst to me until I caught the report on the radio - deeply affecting the lives of many others. The folks that loved 339 are sad, but no word as far as I can tell on the drivers of the car. Are they experiencing remorse? Is the shock of striking a large mammal with your automobile made much, much worse upon discovering the bear was famous? Is their insurance company, like mine, not providing any coverage at all? Have they also been just a little scared to drive in the last few days?

Fortunately John Boy the auto painter was able to recommend me a decent alignment shop and they're gonna give the car a look in a week or two. I was touched by the sentiment they shared with me via text while we were making the appointment - hey, you gotta stay optimistic. Perhaps that's true. Lately many people have been saying to me things like this will ultimately be a good opportunity for you, you're better off, this is the kind of thing that leads to better things eventually, etc. And in my now crucial search for meaningful and not-too-soul-sucking employment that may come to be the case. I have been very stressed out a lot of the time the last two years, perhaps I could relax a bit. Like the bear, I didn't see it coming. And I'm also struggling to see what kind of opportunity might arise out of my unfortunate collision with ursus americanus. I needed a win and having to buy a new car will diminish the number of possible futures before me.

Sometimes bad things happen and they suck ass. There is a comfort in knowing that. As the dude in the stairwell said to me many years ago when I asked him to stop smoking indoors next to my bedroom - hey man, shit happens.

And the bear very well may be out there continuing to bulk up. I never saw the body, neither in its final panicked moments before our paths collided nor in the terrifying stillness of the aftermath. It may have made it through. The car may once again be street legal. I may find another niche to comfortably settle into. Wilder things have happened. Or none of that is true - nothing in this life is guaranteed. And in the spring, when all is thawed and we return to life, maybe I will spot the bear grazing at the edges of the wood, a telltale patch of stripped fur on its flank. We yet live, see how the days get longer.

But what about you? Are you scared to drive sometimes? Does it also make you feel panicked to live in a part of the world that demands you drive a vehicle? Do you think the bear survived?