A Friendly Grizzly
This week’s words were grizzly and closed, which of course pushed us toward bears, cabins, and places that may or may not be safe to enter.
After a few minutes of bantering, we began, as usual, by definition-dipping. A grizzly isn’t just the bear. It can also mean gray-haired or gray-streaked. Huh! Who knew.
Leah brought a drawing of a very sweet-looking grizzly, done in ink and colored pencil, with extremely kind eyes for an animal that is known for ripping things apart, including parting people from their own scalps.
Leah also shared “Margot and the Unexpected Guest,” a story about a woman living alone in a remote cabin who decides to welcome a mysterious visitor in from the cold.
Michelle followed with “Grizzly Closed,” a quieter, dreamlike piece about an abandoned art shop with a single painting titled Grizzly.
Somewhere in the middle we noticed that both of our grizzlies ended up feeling… kind. gentle.
Then we drifted into real bear (grizzly or otherwise) stories. Leah once nearly biked straight into one in the dark. Another time a DoorDash delivery (the delivery, not the driver) was eaten by a cub plopped down just outside her gate.
And then a surprise guest arrived: David Kirby (Leah’s dad, Michelle’s husband), who joined us by phone from just a few rooms away to tell a Yosemite camping story involving a bear ripping open a tent!!!
Yup. That’s how it goes around here.
If you came up with anything from this week’s prompts, please send it to us. A photo, a text, a voice note. We’d love to see what you created, and we’d love to share it too.
And if you have any words to add to our jars, send those along as well. :)
Next week we have: 1970s Sitcoms + Knives (that should be interesting)
Stay Wild,
Michelle & Leah
Listen to us on Spotify!
Leah’s Piece:
Michelle’s Piece:
Grizzly Closed
The art shop on Main Street had been closed for weeks.
A “For Sale” sign clung to its windows
their glass dim with dust
like sleepy eyes that had forgotten how to blink.
When Tress stepped inside,
the bell above the door did not ring.
It sighed.
Inside, the quiet gathered softly
in the way old libraries and winter mornings are quiet
Books long untouched,
mornings that never quite wake
It was empty other than a few dustballs.
A breeze from a cracked window brought up a loose piece of
bubblewrap trapped skidding in a corner.
Kinda eerie, she thought,
this vast emptiness.
Except on the far wall she saw a single, large painting.
She approached it and read
a brass plate beneath it:
“Grizzly”
The paint was thick,
rough,
Lush
Rivers of brown and gold ran across the canvas,
shadows
folding into deeper darkness
threads of lights seeping,
peeking through
here
and there.
It looked less like a painting
and more like a feeling someone had trapped in color.
Not really something seen,
Something remembered.
Tress stood very still
looking closer, trying to find a grizzly…
She listened
not with her ears
but with that small hidden place inside each of us
where wonder lives
The painting seemed to breathe.
Strangely, this did not frighten her.
It only made her curious.
Instead of turning away, she stepped closer.
Just one more step, and the world softened around her
like snow melting into water.
And then, just as Alice stepping through the looking glass,
Tress stepped through.
A forest opened
stretching wide and patient,
trees rising like pine green towers.
Wind moved through the branches
like a lullaby the earth had been singing.
A lullaby too old to have a beginning.
There were no wars here.
No shouting leaders pounding their chests and
boasting like restless boys.
No borders scratched into the soil.
Only grizzly.
A great many grizzlies.
Soft giants with fur the color of mountains at sunset.
They moved through the forest like slow rivers of life.
Powerful
Steady
Peaceful.
A cub tumbled out of a patch of clover,
soft and unsteady as laughter.
An old one leaned into an ancient tree,
scratched its back
as though time itself lived in the bark.
Everything breathed together
The forest,
The light,
the quiet turning of the world.
It felt like a deep breath the universe had finally finished taking.
Tress walked into a meadow
where tall grasses brushed her hands,
and sunlight fell in warm, scattered pieces.
The same cub found her
It came without fear
and sat beside her
as though she had always belonged.
And in that stillness she understood…
This place was not wild like storms or fire.
but of kindness,
A quiet kingdom where the only rulers were
forests, rivers,
and gentle grizzly hearts,
made of strength that did not need to rise,
because nothing here asked it to.
No voices broke the air.
No lines divided the earth.
There was only the steady hush of living things
being exactly what they were.
The cub leaned against her.
Warm.
Real.
In that moment Tress felt she had not stepped into another world at all,
but into the peaceful dream
the earth had been trying to
remember.
