The bear

Laila tells us:
 
In the dark night
It was autumn, it was night and I was sleeping together with my husband Per and our son Johan in our little chalet in the forest.
But something was wrong with my stomach so I woke up and felt that I had to go to the “dass”, the bog-house, a tiny little room of only one square-meter, with thin walls of wood, situated 50 meters from the house.
It was dark outside but it was not so totally black as it can be at new moon.

It was the kind of darkness that looks black from inside a house, where you have light, but when you get out the eyes quickly get used to the darkness and you can see everything as black-and-white shadows. If you don't use a lamp, of course, because then you loose your ability to see in the dark night.

I went out to the little “dass” and there was no problem – not until I heard something moving between the pines. I looked out through the open door and I saw a bear coming towards me.
I quickly closed the door and I was holding it hard to keep it closed..

If you do not hold this door it swings open again because the little lock is broken.

The bear came up to the bog-house and walked around it, scratching here and scratching there with his big paws. I was holding the door as hard as I could and after a while I could hear the bear sniffing on the other side of the door!
We were only a few inches from each other and he must have heard my heart-beats and my breathing!!!
If the bear had wanted to, he could easily have broken the whole house, and he certainly knew that I was there.
I was holding the door hard and I tried to be completely silent.

I knew that a bear doesn't attack without reason and I didn't want to make him surprised, afraid or angry.
If he had just scratched a little with his claws in the chink he would have opened the door.

I felt as if I was sitting there for many hours but probably only one hour had passed when the noises from the bear had stopped.
But I was so scared that I remained sitting there for one more hour before I dared to look out.

Now the first daylight had come and I could see that there was no bear.
I quickly run home!

I woke up Per and I was angry with him because he had not missed me. I had been away for two hours in the middle of the night and he had not even noticed it!
He had been asleep so he did not even understand what I was talking about and then he just fell asleep again.
But on the other hand – if he had missed me he would maybe not have been able to do much  anyway.
Maybe the bear had been searching for a good place to sleep over winter and hearing me he had just thought that this place was already occupied, being “someone else's sleeping-place”?

Viveca Lammers

 How The Forest People started