Those Cute Little West Virginia Bears

I have a new favorite post card. It features a complacent- appearing black bear. He or she is quite authentic in appearance-- right down to having a few pine needles and bits of dry grass caught in his/her fur. The print accompanying this fine photo says: “Send more tourists to West Virginia. The last ones were delicious.” 

You may have to be a West Virginian to appreciate that, but it tickled me since no one I know believes anything larger than the occasional small animal likely to get eaten by a bear. Most of the year the bears here exist on berries and other vegetative goodies, given that there is not much water deep enough to provide nourishing fish. I love seeing the few bears we have around and we’ve never known them to come looking for trouble. On the other hand, bears are associated with our area and we capitalize on that. I often put their images on my pots, and I always put them on pots that celebrate the Lost River Valley.

Doug Gronholn, our store manager at Lost River ArtisansCooperative, is an ardent and creative crafter. Recently he volunteered ME to make bear ornaments for the yoga institute coming to town in June. Having taken my “Play in the Clay” class last year, Doug came and spent a whole day making bears with me—between 70 and 80 of them. We got them cleaned too, which was big job. Then they dried and were fired. A week later Doug returned and we glazed bears all day. Each one has LRV on it for the Lost River Valley. He’ll soon be back to help attach ribbons for hanging them. There will be an adequate supply of LRV bears to give one to each delicious tourist!

 

Critter cutters

I love animals. The older I get (and the years are accumulating impressively), the more I love animals. The beautiful red fox I watched traverse a snowy field this winter is happily fixed in my mind as a magnificent gift-- his or her lovely, bushy tail flowing along behind. The birds back this spring are all warmly welcomed, as are the rabbits and other creatures who never left. Although for reasons unknown rabbits are seldom seen right here in Lost Hollow, I often notice them by the cabin on the way out to the road. I am most likely to see the foxes around there too, as well as red-tailed hawks. That combination may not tell the story I would like, but such are the realities of nature.

Somehow a small catalog from a place called Fancy Flours arrived in my mailbox. Most catalogs get recycled upon arrival, but I am a baker and this one caught my eye. It has everything for decorating cakes and making candy, despite those being activities in which I do not engage beyond their simplest home-based forms. However, the little catalog also has molds and cutters to which I do relate

(squirrels, acorns, bunnies, foxes, owls). When I send an order in, I am sure some worker never guesses how I use their products—that is, for clay play. As much as I love animals, I am no artist. While drawing a fox in clay could result in massive misinterpretation, my cutters give them clarity and sometimes even personality. The same with the owls--the cutters turn them from birds of prey to cute.
 


I listened to owls in our woods all winter, and welcomed the return of the whip-poor-wills for some evening variation. The latter are creatures of mystery, indeed, not even having nests but laying their eggs on the ground and somehow migrating clear to Mexico or Central America while hardly ever being sighted. I grew up hearing them in New York, but I never saw one until my 69^th year when a whip-poor-will perched on the wall behind our house and sang and sang his or her distinctive mantra. Truly masters of camouflage, you will never see a whip-poor-will on my pots for it would be much too difficult to depict or discern. But those wonderfully visible foxes,  owls, rabbits, and many other creatures of the forest? Look for those and you will find!