It's evening in the Valley ... thoughts while sitting on the deck

I love the quiet of the hours before dark. I'm sitting on the deck in the cool of the evening, a slight rustle through the leaves, with temperatures in the low 70s. The weather has been fantastic the past week and so we've enjoyed smelling the freshly dampened soil when it rains, listening to the summertime cicadas and crickets and tree frogs, hearing as rain drops plop on leaves outside the window, and enjoying just being alive in such a peaceful, beautiful place.

It's been a busy summer spent with family and friends as we've traveled, visited, and enjoyed just being together and doing things. We've entertained company here at home, and we've traveled to visit others. Many memories have been made and stored away.

I still cannot believe it's August. AccuWeather has forecasted an early fall with temperatures below normal beginning the end of this month. It's been a comfortable summer ... a few patches of hot, hot weather but mostly cool nights, comfortable days, and low humidity when cold fronts pass through. For campers like us, the beauty of living in the Shenandoah Valley is "camping" from home. We have all the privacy and convenience, yet can enjoy the beauty of the mountains -- you know, the things people pay to do in this part of Virginia. That used to be me while growing up in Chesterfield. I've lived here 17 years now ... I'm still pinching myself to believe that it's real.

I still see the majestic mountains, the breath-taking vistas, the fields of freshly baled hay, the wildflowers and birds and wildlife. And when I look at those things, I see God's hand at work. Just wait until October's blaze of autumn colors take over!

Ahh -- a hummingbird just buzzed me, coming in from three directions, hovering and making that little squeaky sound they do. I looked at him as he buzzed in front of me -- he looked at me, I looked at him -- and he hung in mid-air before finally lazily zipping away.

There's a butterfly on the deck railing. I've noticed this week the butterflies are all over the deck and the trees whose branches shade the table and chairs. We have a maple and bass tree adjacent ... blue swallowtails, orange monarchs, and some smaller species that I'm not familiar with have covered the railing and branches. They have added a new dimension to enjoying the outdoors.

Yellow bass tree leaves are beginning to litter the ground as they do toward the end of summer each year and, in the past, I attributed it to the hot, dry weather. However, this year has been rainy and fairly cool -- grass and trees are still lush and green -- so it must just be part of that tree's life cycle.

Our deck is on the second story of our house which gives me some added comfort in an area that has seen black bears, coyotes, deer, wild turkeys, some have said they've seen some type of panther over the years, and other wild creatures.

Tonight our next door neighbor, who has 60 acres of pasture and woods, informed us that a bear visited him this week, killing one of his goats and causing havoc in his barn. His motion camera caught photos of it that I hope to get and post ... he said it was the larger of the two bears that have been seen in this area all summer. Thank goodness he hasn't yet discovered our garden.

So I'm sitting on the deck with my chair facing into the yard, camera on the table beside me, because you never know when that Kodak moment might pop up. I don't want to be surprised like SWAC Husband was in the spring when he was sitting in a chair near the garden and had kind of dozed off in the sunshine, waking up just in time to hear a panting sound as a bear came up the yard right toward him. I don't know who was more startled -- him or the bear -- but they both took off in opposite directions.

No deer yet under the trees at the back of the yard which is kind of unusual since it's 8:00 and this is when they come out to graze. Maybe they are wary of the furry visitor next door.

And the hummingbird just came back. I've got purple Mexican heather and blue dwarf potted morning glories out here ... perhaps I'm disrupting his evening snack. As I look across the yard toward the garden, a bunny is nibbling on this side of the fence. Good bunny. Eat the grass and not the veggies. Still no deer under the trees at the edge of the woods ... very unusual this close to dark.

So I'll sit out and enjoy the coolness a while longer. Sometimes I stay out until after dark, watching as the stars come out, and sometimes the bull frogs in the neighbor's pond add their deep bass to the chorus of night sounds.

It's August in the Valley....

Photo by Lynn R. Mitchell

If you live in Virginia, you're in black bear country

Our friends over at the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries remind us that it's black bear season in Virginia. While we're used to seeing bears in the mountains and surrounding areas, they can show up just about anywhere in the Commonwealth.

If you have bird feeders, garbage cans, compost piles, and fruit trees, you could have bears. Same with outdoor grills, outdoor pet or livestock food, and beehives ... they could attract bears.

My friend Barb who lives in the eastern part of Augusta County just below Shenandoah National Park saw her outdoor spotlight click on one night last year and when she looked out the window to see what had triggered it, there was a big old black bear that had knocked her bird feeder to the ground and was sprawled out scooping up seed. She didn't refill the feeder but the next night the bear returned looking for his smorgasboard only to find nothing but a few seeds in the grass. He returned the third night to nothing and then did not return after that. Barb didn't keep the food source available and discouraged the bear.

Another friend who lives a few miles away lost her pet goats to a black bear several years ago. Our neighbor across the street had a bear trying to get into his storage building in the middle of the night in 2006. In 2006, an Augusta County resident came face-to-face with a black bear.

Game and Inland Fisheries has a video, Living With Bears in Virginia, and reminds that if you live in Virginia, you live in bear country.

Photo I took of mama black bear and two cubs at Loft Mountain Campground in Shenandoah National Park, October 2010

SNP: Mama bear plus 2

This mama black bear and two cubs crossed the road near our camp site just before sunset Saturday evening. What a special treat to see her playfully batting with them on the side of the road before crossing and heading up the mountain.

Other posts:
- The mountains are calling and I must go
- SNP: Mama bear plus 2
- SNP: Sunset in the Blue Ridge Mountains
- SNP: Camping along Skyline Drive #1
- SNP: Camping along the Skyline Drive #2
- SNP: Camping along the Skyline Drive #3

Photo by SWAC Girl
Lynn Mitchell
October 3, 2009

Black bears at Big Meadows

We were sitting around the picnic table at Big Meadows Sunday afternoon, talking and enjoying the pleasant day, when SWAC Son heard something nearby and we all looked and saw this black bear. It was looking for grubs, turning over rocks and pawing at the ground, and continued to work its way through the woods and not toward our picnic table. Since we had brats on the grill and food on the table, we packed everything into our vehicle just in case it decided to return.

Earlier a black bear was seen from the trail behind Big Meadows Lodge.

Crossing the trail

Rooting for grubs and other goodies

SWAC Husband looking out over the Page Valley and Massanutten from Black Rock near Big Meadows Lodge.

Photos by SWAC Daughter
August 9, 2009

Black bears in Shenandoah National Park

If you're going to Shenandoah National Park, you will see deer.
They are everywhere! But ...
... did you know you'll more than likely also see black bears ... like the one pictured above? What d'ya mean, you don't see a bear in the photo? It's right there ... a yearling cub ... in the greenery.

And here's a full grown black bear. What? You don't see it either? It's right there just behind the tall wild flowers ...

... and these are people standing within 30' of a full-grown wild black bear as they snap photos.

We worked our way through the traffic jam that had completely blocked Skyline Drive as people jumped out of their vehicles and rushed across the roadway to see the bear.

When I was a child, my family went camping at Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee where black bears were prevalent. A memory in my six-year-old mind was of cars stopped along the roadways and people standing with cameras taking photos of black bears. My sensible parents did not allow us out of the vehicle nor did they venture out. The danger was obvious.

Years later as my husband and I explored Yellowstone National Park, we were surprised at the people who exited their vehicles to take photos of the buffalo, the huge beasts that looked as if they would be slugs ... but those suckers are lightning fast.

All those memories flooded back this week while traveling along the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park and seeing the same type of traffic jams whenever black bears were spotted.

As we inched our way through a throng that had clogged the Drive on the stretch between Rt. 33 and Big Meadows, I called out the window, "What are we looking at?" A nice lady standing on the shoulder of the roadway alerted me to a full-grown black bear not 30' away. It seemed harmless enough as it rooted for grubs and did whatever bears do in the middle of the day.

Another lady turned and said, "You've got to get out of the car to see it." And, indeed, it was difficult (but not impossible) to see the bear from that vantage point ... but I said, "Oh, that won't be happening."

What I really wanted to say was, "You have got to be kidding! There is no way on God's green earth I would stand 30' away from a wild black bear and snap a picture. No way! This is a national park ... not a zoo!"

I guarantee you that bear could cover 30' faster than I would be able to scramble back into the vehicle. I didn't get a photo of the bear ... all I got was foliage. As we pulled away, the crowd was still straining their necks, cameras in hand, hoping for a glimpse of a bear.

I guess those folks may not have heard that the black bear population is exploding in the western part of Virginia ...

... or about the hunter who was attacked by a black bear in a nearby county ...

... or the aggressive bear alert put out last Fall in Shenandoah National Park ...

... or that bears have been nabbing family pets ...

... or the bear that attacked a man in Augusta County in 2006 ...

... or our across-the-street neighbors who were awakened in the middle of the night in 2007 when a black bear was breaking into their storage shed.

Hope we don't ever hear that a black bear attacked a visitor in the Park.

Black bear attacks hunter

A hunter in Botetourt County, Virginia, became the victim Saturday when a black bear turned on him in the Jefferson National Forest.

WRIC TV-8 reported:

The bear was chased up into a tree and shot by the hunters before leaving the tree and attacking the hunter.

The man suffered a severe laceration to his leg and was taken to Roanoke Memorial Hospital for treatment. The bear was fatally shot by one of the other hunters in the party.

Aggresive bear alert in Shenandoah National Park

Bears who are on the prowl for food after a dry summer in the Blue Ridge Mountains are what prompted Shenandoah National Park rangers to issue an aggressive bear alert to visitors who will be flooding the area this leaf season, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

For the first time in recent memory, park officials have posted signs in problem areas such as trailheads to warn about “aggressive” bears. One sign at the Hawksbill trail just north of Big Meadows campground warns against even camping in the area. It says “bears along this trail have harassed visitors, taken food, and damaged equipment including backpacks.”

Food in tents, backpacks, and cooking on grills could be a target to a hungry bear:

So far this year, park officials have recorded 130 to 150 unfriendly or uneasy encounters with bears. Those might include a bear following a hiker or a getting spooked on an encounter with a human but then stopping and hanging around ...

Bear sightings have been up in the Shenandoah Valley. Even here in my own neighborhood we have a young black bear, reportedly at 150-200 pounds, roaming the area looking for handouts. Neighbors who feed the deer (something I will never understand since we are already overrun with them) are now feeding the bears who have staked out an easy food source.

Growing up camping in Shenandoah National Park, we were used to frequent bear sightings especially in the evenings after dinners had been cooked and some careless camper had left food on the tables or coolers outside their vehicle. It has always been a given to anyone who camped in that area to pack it away in a vehicle. Even toothpaste in a makeup bag in a tent could become the target of a sharp-nosed bear.

In my part of western Augusta County some bushes are loaded with berries and the black walnuts have fallen ... but I have heard from hunters that acorns in the mountains haven't fallen, perhaps because we haven't had our first heavy frost yet, so bears are roaming into areas where they will have human encounters as they search for food.

Outside pet food dishes, bird feeders, squirrel feeders (don't understand that one, either, because they quickly become pests), feeding deer -- any outside food source is a potential draw for a hungry bear.

Shenandoah ... where the deer and the black bears play....

Tonight as I washed dishes I was looking out the kitchen window at the deer in the far end of our backyard under the trees leading into the woods. There were 6-8 of them grazing in the gathering dusk so, not being one to ever let anything stop me from getting away from dishes, I slipped out to the deck to get a better view.

I saw something I had not seen in the backyard before ... a young doe and young buck frolicking and playfully chasing one another almost in a courtship-type fashion. It continued for a while, and they never left the yard as they trotted under the apple trees, around them ... back across to toward the dogwood trees on the other side of the yard ... and back again.

This seemed to be the wrong time of year for something like that ... so I called my wildlife friend and fellow home school parent, Al Bourgeois, of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Al laughed when I told him about it and said that, yes, it's the wrong time of year for deer to be in heat because little ones would be born in February at this point (deer have a seven-month pregnancy). However, he laughingly said it was probably a young buck and doe ... much like teenagers ... doing lots of experimenting ... much like teenagers ... getting ready for the real games later in the year.

My question was answered. Everytime I have a wildlife question, I know I can turn to Al or another former home school parent David Kocka, also of the Game and Inland Fisheries, for answers.


When black bears came into our yard a few years ago, David answered questions. When a strange, hair-raising noise came out of the dark mountain woods one summer night (it sounded eerily like a human screaming, "Help!"), when coyotes roamed the ridge behind the house, when mountain lion sightings have been reported by neighbors, when black bears are found in Staunton (once a cub went inside the back open door of the CVS Pharmacy in western Staunton about eight years ago) ... Al and David have been there with answers. They trap out nusience black bears, tag and watch cubs, and do all kinds of work in the national forests that surround the SWAC area.

It has been an educational treat throughout the years to know these men and have them as part of our home school community in Augusta County.

So ... tonight in my backyard the deer were practicing for (rein)deer games....