In New Hampshire for a book reading, visiting bro — all the New Hampshire things: granite boulders and thickety woods, the clear Saco River where we alternate post-hike lying in the pebbly river and warming on the water-polished rocks, so much talk and laughter, all the things.

A fellow hiker stops us on the trail and points at two black bear cubs in a tree, the great mama below, brown-nosed like a creature in a child’s picture book, but of course not at all like a child’s tale. Wordlessly, we admire the animals, one cub climbing a branch, round in limb, enchanting. Then slowly we make our way off the trail and through the forest, a great half-circle, to leave these creatures to their own wild way.

In my own corner of Vermont, I’ve spied so many bears this summer. Always, this flash of awe, this sense of luck to know this sliver of wild, immediately followed by caution: keep our human realm away from these creatures in their own bear domesticity.

It is a mystery to me where each word begins and ends, let alone each phrase. ~ Jean Said Makdisi