A black shape of a bear is drawn on a yellow background with big capital letters of ‘Beware of Bears!’. That is a poster I see everyday out of my apartment window lately. Not just one. It’s on the fence along a stream and at the little bridge over it so that I spot it everywhere sitting at my table. It has multiplied rapidly this year. On a bench at the nearby park, on the public bathroom wall in my neighborhood, at scattered vacant lots, the posters are rampant here and there that I’d never seen before in my town. Those are not just for warning. Those indicate the spots where bear’s foot prints were left or a bear was actually witnessed. From morning till night, patrol cars with loudspeakers drive around blaring out “Bears are spotted! Be careful when going out!” all day long. The car stops on the little bridge beneath my window and sets off firecrackers to scare off bears. Some members of the local hunting association fired blank shots there. It’s said that the reason why bears come down to a residential area from the mountains so often has to do with the climate change that causes a shortage of food for them.
About ten years have passed since I moved in this snowy town
enclosed by the mountains. It’s been warmer and snowed less year after
year compared to when I began to live here. That has helped make my
winter days easier that I used to suffer from claustrophobia by the deep
snow coverage.
Added to the climate change that affects my daily
life, I also sense my own mind changes. I had feared if a monotonous
country life rusted me away when I decided to move in here. It didn’t
happen. Rather, the quiet life increased my concentration and
contributed more productivity for my lifework than the time when I lived
in the metropolitan area. I have a serener mindset than before and it
gives me more understanding toward myself and the world I live in.
Recently,
people have stayed home and worked remotely in Japan too. They have
left big cities and moved to rural areas. More and more people from
Tokyo have moved into my small town that I had expected nothing but to
become desolate every year. There are many unfamiliar new residents in
the apartment building where I live. The building used to look like a
ghost house with dark windows, but it has almost no available room now. I
had never imagined that would happen mere one year before. The
unthinkable things occurred at the unthinkable speed. In this trend, we
can’t tell what happens next. In three years, bears might be chasing
after me. Not bears but people might start chasing people and killing
each other. Or human race might extinct because of viruses. There might
be days of a panic, or moments of danger for life. Even so, it could
turn to be better. These unprecedented years have shown how much human
imagination is limited. I myself have learned that a superficially dire
thing can turn out to be a good thing in the end. Besides, I saw
unthinkable things happen, so why not unthinkably good ones? I believe
they could happen as well. They should.
