A Dream of Bears

The last survivors of a vanishing species haunt the French Pyrenees

Where I live, in the mountains of northwest Montana, in the Yaak Valley, I can walk back and forth between two countries, two cultures, the United States and Canada. I love the feeling of sanctity afforded by the rugged mountains. We even have grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) -- a close relative of the European brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) -- though we don't have very many of them: perhaps only two dozen or so.

For these reasons, I have a deep affinity for the wild landscape of the Pyrenees, where the population of brown bears is similarly reduced -- perhaps 20 in the central Pyrenees and only 5 in the western Pyrenees. These last few bears wander between France and Spain, unconcerned with international borders. As in Montana, the inhabitants of the nearby small towns and villages are of mixed opinions about the bear. No species is more powerful, or capable of arousing more fear. Some people, however, are drawn to the habitats of bears, and I am one of them.

I'm traveling with three friends -- the writer Pascal Dessaint, of Toulouse; his wife, Florence; and François Gavillon, a professor of American literature at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale. We stop off in Arbas, in the central Pyrenees. The mayor of this little mountain town, François Arcangéli, is a supporter of bears. He recognizes their economic potential to attract tourists, but also asserts that the bears were here first, and have a right to exist. It turns out that he has traveled all over the world, visiting other rural communities that have learned -- or are learning -- to coexist with bears: places in Slovenia, Spain, Italy, and Montana.

"Every issue in my village is related to the bear," he says, referring to the power even a few bears hold over people's emotions. The bears arouse great passion in people who are for them as well as against them. Livestock owners are compensated if a bear kills any of their animals, and the government provides assistance to protect their stock: electric fences and portable gates. However, many of them refuse this because they believe it would send a signal that they support bear recovery. "It's complicated," Arcangéli says.

Bears have coexisted with humans for thousands of years. He tells us that scientists discovered a clay statue of a bear, far back in the mountains, that might be 10,000 years old. No one is sure what the statue's purpose was, but clearly some ceremony was involved, some accordance of great respect.

"There has to be some kind of solution," Arcangéli says.

Seclusion has always pretty much defined the town of Cominac, an hour south of Arbas. This region of France, known as the Couserans, has always had its own distinct identity, and has always identified deeply with bears, which once were numerous throughout the forests, browsing on mast, like boars. Citizens would capture cubs from their dens and raise them as pets. Nineteenth-century photographs show women and children walking down the streets with bears on chain leashes, as if they were but poodles, while other photos, more disturbing, show bears in manacles, shackles, and leather muzzles, like tortured detainees. Somewhere respect seems to have filtered out of the relationship. Cominac became known as le pays des montreurs d'ours -- roughly translatable as "the country of those who put bears on display."

We set out before daylight, for we have a long hike ahead of us in search of a shepherd. We have been told he supports the recovery of bears, despite the fact that they sometimes kill and eat sheep.

At a pass, a notch in the mountains, we pause at Le Chemin de la Liberté, the Freedom Trail, the route taken by French Jews fleeing the Holocaust, seeking refuge on the other side of the mountains, in Spain. Pascal's wife, Florence, is particularly silent; receptive, I've noticed, to the landscape's moods at every turn. It's humbling to be standing in the same place with hardly a care in the world: not in frantic flight for our lives but as visitors dressed for the journey, and making it at our leisure, with only that thinnest breach of time separating us.

Pascal inhales the morning air deeply and grins. We study the map of the immense mountain range. He points out the various high alpine meadows where the shepherd might be.

We start out hiking through an ancient beech forest, the new green leaves of summer filtering the sunstruck morning fog into a beguiling, diffused light that shimmers gold. It's enchanting. We walk in stunned silence. Pascal and François are energetic, powerful walkers, thrilled to be in big country. I recognize many of the same mountain flowers that cheer me on my walks in Montana. Pyrenean chamois, a kind of small antelope, charge across a rocky slope near a sheepherder's abandoned stone cabin. I keep searching for bear tracks on the trail, claw marks on the trees, but find none.

There is no sign of other humans, in valley after valley. It begins to rain, a cold, blowing rain with tatters of fog shrouding the mountains and hurtling past us. Finally, in midafternoon, we find our shepherd and his flock, deeper into the rain. The mountains are so lush and green that it seems they are hissing with new growth. Francis Chevillon is standing out in the rain with a crookstaff, while two of his dogs dash and play at his feet. He's wearing tall rubber boots and a broad canvas hat with two vulture feathers stuck in it. Although he doesn't seem overwhelmed with happiness to see us, he does invite us into his tiny stone cabin.

Francis is a gaunt man, his ascetic appearance heightened by a huge and unruly gray beard that seems perfectly counterbalanced by clear blue-gray eyes. He's glad to see that we've brought food for a feast. "It's hard to cook for one," he admits. Seeing us shiver, he gets up and lights a small fire. He slices cheese and bread, pours wine.

"Every shepherd must have a sickness to survive," Francis says, pointing to his books. "Mine is reading." Ever since he was a small child, he says, he has always gone off alone to read.

He has never seen a bear in the Pyrenees, he says, but wants very much to see one. He says that bears force people in his profession to be good shepherds -- to do the kind of job they should already be doing, keeping a close eye on their flocks.

"It takes a pure heart to see a bear," he says, then shakes his head slowly, as if he has been trying but has not yet been found worthy.

We visit for almost two hours, with a steady rain falling and a few cows standing right outside the open door, looking in. Francis says he loves the rain because it allows him to catch up on his reading; the sheep huddle together down in the trees, and do not need herding. "Anyone who does not love the mountains in the rain," he says, "does not know the mountains."

We hiked seven hard up-and-down hours to get here, and even though the return trip is mostly downhill, we'll need at least five to get back. It will be a long day and a late night. We say our good-byes and rise. Francis follows us out into the rain, and I get the feeling he has just started to warm up to us. He's saying how elephants are his favorite animal, how he has journeyed to India to see them, to be with them...

Continued...