Ear to the Ground See Travel Map

The Bear That Was Always Hungry

For many years I had a favorite book. It was called “The Bear Who Was Always Hungry”. My childhood copy was literarily read to pieces. The back of the book was falling off so you had to be real careful when you held it in your hand. At first it was in my mother’s hand because I couldn’t read myself. As soon as I figured out the mystery of the small fly legs called the alphabet I started reading that book myself. I read it over and over.
The story is about a bear and a puma that are friends. They are both captured in a circus where they have to perform. They are treated badly and don’t get enough to eat.
One evening at the circus something happens. The electricity goes out or whatever, I don’t remember exactly. The two friends bear and puma manage to escape. They can’t believe their luck. And they know what they want to do: they want to go home to the huge forests in North-West America where they come from.
They have a long way to go. Their journey is full of adventures, often having to do with the bear that is always hungry, especially for honey. His craving often causes dangerous situations where they in the last second get rescued by puma’s intelligence. But sometimes puma gets in trouble and bear’s strength is needed to save him. Their friendship carries them through. So after many adventures and a long journey they manage to get home to the land of the huge forests.
For many years I thought the writer was an American because of his name, Eric Alden. Many years after the complete dissolving of the book I started doing some research and found out that the writer was totally Danish, but had an American pen name! Quite funny actually, I thought I was reading an exotic book from the States and the writer turned out to come from my own back yard. Which only goes to show that the power of the imagination is the greatest power of all.
Doing this Ear to the Ground road trip up along the Pacific coast through California, Oregon, Washington and Vancouver B.C. has brought my favorite childhood book back in my mind. In my early years I identified with the bear’s constant hunger for honey and the desire of the two friends to get out of circus and back home. Now I experience the magic of those huge Redwood trees and I truly understand why they wanted to get back.
I am sure I have been traveling in the footpaths of bear and puma. They wanted to get back into the cathedral of these majestic trees. I am a tall woman, but being among the Redwood trees makes me feel tiny. I lean back my neck to look up and I can hardly see the treetops. I just know they must be up there somewhere close to eternity.
From our friends in Vancouver I was told that bears once in a while walk directly into downtown Vancouver if they have too little food out in the big forests.
They must take good care not to be caught by the human circus.