Hunting With Bergie
Bergie took me hunting. What an experience! We tracked three deer all over one mountain and never spotted them once.
Just like a bear, Bergie would put her head down, hunch her shoulders, and push her way through the dense underbrush.
To me it was just bush and ground but to her it was a vast diary of the animal world. While on a running gallop, only stopping from time to time to take a slug of raw goatsmilk from a quart canning jar, she pointed out three sets of deer hoof imprints. She pointed out where they slept, which way they were moving , and when they stopped to browse. We went completely up and around one mountain and when we finally came down and onto a powerline she was quick to spot some cougar dung. Like a connoisseur rolling a favoured cuban cigar with the fingers, she fondled the piece of faeces, broke it in half, and put it to her nose, inhaling deeply. Phew, was the exclamation. It was fresh. But she told me what it had eaten, when it left the scat, and which way it was travelling.
Bergie Solberg at home in the mountains
I do not know where Bergie is today. I want to keep her in my memories as always being part of the British Columbia wilderness, like the cougars, and the bears, and the forests.
Her happy infectious laughter is still ringing in my ears and most of her life she was truly free.
