Bear-Happy

The bears have names.  For a city person, seeing even one black bear in the wild is a rare and startling experience.  To see several at the same time from the deck of a bed and breakfast, and to hear one’s hosts affectionately call out to them by such names as Bruno, Cocopuff, and Uglybear, is to pass from the startling to the exotic.  And yet, at the Wildernest Inn in Rough Run, West Virginia, such experiences are commonplace, especially in the fall, as the bears fatten themselves in preparation for winter.  The hosts and owners of the Wildernest, Stewart and Kathy Hornby, natives of, respectively, South Africa and Zimbabwe, have always loved animals and thought they would never find a similar combination of wildness and natural beauty when they left Africa in 1995.  But when, after a period of residence in Puerto Rico, they came to West Virginia seven years ago and purchased the Wilderness Inn, situated atop a steep and heavily wooded mountain in one of the most scenic areas in the state, they found to their delight that they would be sharing their mountain habitat with deer, foxes, raccoons, many species of birds, and a healthy population of black bears.  Now U.S. citizens, they have fallen in love with their mountaintop home, and visitors quickly come to understand why.

The strictest rule for guests at the Inn is neither to feed nor approach the bears, yet in spite of the respectful distance that all guests keep from the shy, cautious and inoffensive creatures, the bears keep coming back, year after year.  One should be careful not to romanticize what goes in the brain of what is, after all, a large wild animal, yet there seems to be a mutual curiosity between bears and people that is heartening to witness.  That relationship is of course much dicier when the bears leave the mountain in early spring to find a mate, but here, for now, they seem to know that they’re safe, and who their protectors are.

Stewart and Kathy have made their mountain home an animal sanctuary, which seems most agreeable to the bears.  During a very recent visit to the Wildernest, my wife and I were among several guests treated to a prolonged sighting of a mother bear and her two cubs.  The cubs shimmied up two different trees at the appearance of Bruno, the dominant bear on the mountain and Kathy and Stewart’s oldest friend among the bears, but they soon came down and rejoined their mother.  Bruno is now seven years old, and many of the bears one sees around the Wildernest are his children and great-grandchildren.  He is also the tallest, and when well-fed and healthy, the largest bear on the mountain, at something shy of four hundred pounds.  When we saw him recently, however, he was thinner, and his coat was a little patchy, as if he had been through some rough times.  But his affection for Kathy is undeniable, and on both evenings of our visit he climbed onto the Hornby’s private deck and sprawled in front of their sliding door, clearly seeking her company.

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We discovered the Wildernest ourselves a few months before it changed hands from the original owners to Stewart and Kathy, and have returned many times since, in every season, often bringing friends and family with us to share the experience.  One year, in December, we were the only guests, and were treated more like visiting friends, as our hosts regaled us with a harrowing story of how they weathered a powerful hurricane during one long and terrible night in Puerto Rico.

Although one tends to dwell on the bears, they are only the most tale-worthy aspect of an area of astonishing natural gifts that is a mere two-and-a-half-hour drive from our Bethesda, Maryland home.  Less than thirty minutes from the Wildernest is the rugged, spectacular Smoke Hole Canyon and Big Bend Recreation area, surely one of the most awesomely beautiful canyons in this part of the world, through which runs the south fork of the Potomac River, an impressive but far more modest version of the mighty river that divides Maryland and Virginia.  Seneca Rocks, Smoke Hole Caverns, Dolly Sods Wilderness and Spruce Knob, the tallest peak in West Virginia, are just a few of the hotspots for hikers and skiers, none more than forty-five minutes from the Wildernest.  Traffic-weary visitors from the Washington area are always pleasantly surprised by the lightly traveled country roads of Upper Tract and Rough Run, and by the modest footprints West Virginians have made in these largely unspoiled mountains and valleys, where farming and ranching are still the mainstays of the local economy, and where some of the homesteads date back to the 1700s.  There are respectable hiking trails to be found on the land adjacent to the Wildernest, which can be accessed from the front yard of the Inn, and there is a pleasant, one-hour walking trail around the lake in the valley below the Inn.

When one has had one’s fill of hiking or sightseeing, it is always pleasant to return to the Inn for a shower and a rest in the attractive and comfortable rooms, and then have a beer or a glass of wine while sitting on the spacious deck enjoying the view, awaiting Kathy’s always-excellent dinners, which begin at seven sharp with a first-rate salad.  During dinner one might see a hummingbird at a feeder just outside the window, or a bear, richly furred with a coat of the blackest black you’ve ever seen, might walk (I was going to say “lumber,” but that would be inaccurate; they are actually quite graceful in their movements) across the deck or gaze curiously through the sliding door.  At first a novelty, cause for leaving one’s chair to take a look, it soon becomes a fact of life here in this place where peaceful coexistence between man and bear seems not only possible, but normal and natural.  If she has the time, Kathy might come out of the kitchen for a chat, and if one hasn’t cleaned one’s plate, Stewart can be counted on to good-naturedly chafe the guest for lack of appetite.  At night, the darkness is the real thing, untainted by light pollution, and the profound quiet promises a truly restful sleep.  Pleasure is the watchword here, and at no bed-and-breakfast in my experience is it more consistently achieved than at the Wildernest Inn.

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