My brother and I have been doing a lot of cleaning at the cabin. Yesterday he loaded up his truck with a couple bags of stinky trash to take down to the community dumpster. Unfortunately, they had already closed. So, the trash stayed in his truck overnight. Before we went to bed, we discussed what kinds of wildlife would be attracted to the scent. We have cameras that capture movement outside and I was anticipating that something would pay us a visit. At 5:00 this morning, I was somewhat awake and heard the camera notification on my phone. I listened for any noise outside while I found my phone and looked at the video. A little black bear had come to investigate the interesting smell. There was 1 video clip of him sniffing all around the truck and partially climbing on the bumper. He was in the right place to open the door to the topper, but obviously didn’t know how to. The next video showed him standing tall on the other side of the truck. He gave up pretty quickly and left. I opened the door to the small deck on the upper level above the driveway, but the bear had already moved along. When the sun came up, my brother, his dog, and I went outside. My brother’s dog was so excited with the fresh smell of bear, she could hardly contain herself. She was running all around to chase the scent with the hair on her back standing on end. Since it had rained during the night, the truck was wet and the bear left some fun and interesting marks. There were a couple of pretty clear paw prints that were about as big as my hand. And there was a bear nose boop on the side where the bear must have pressed his nose to get a closer smell. It was a very exciting morning. The safe encounters with wildlife is one of my favorite things about the cabin.

I Found God today seeing evidence of a bear.