An Unexpected Porch Encounter
There is an old saying about how you can take the country out of the boy, but you can’t take the boy out of the woods. Well, that might be true enough along the North River or sitting on the bank of a farm pond down here at home, but when you drop a fellow from Tuscaloosa County up into the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains, all that familiar woods sense suddenly feels very thin.
A few years back, I packed a bag and headed northeast into Tennessee. I had rented a little cabin tucked away up in the hills, situated far enough off the beaten path that you had to say a quick prayer every time your tires hit the loose gravel switchbacks.
When I finally pulled up to it, though, it had just about every earthly comfort a person could ask for. It wasn’t roughing it by any stretch. It had all the modern fixings indoors, but the real jewel of the place was the porch. It was one of those wide, sturdy timber decks that wrapped around two full sides and ran all the way across the back, complete with a stone fireplace, an inviting hot tub tucked under the eaves, and heavy wooden rocking chairs made for sitting and doing absolutely nothing for hours at a time. Best of all, that back stretch of porch faced due east, looking straight out over a rolling ridge of mountain laurel and hemlocks where the morning sun likes to make its grand entrance.
Now, I consider myself a reasonable person. But when you walk through the front door of a mountain rental, the first thing that greets you isn’t a bowl of peppermint candy.
Right there on the dining table was a laminated sheet warning in bold letters that black bears had been actively sighted around the property. It gave very strict orders to always inspect the premises through the window before turning a doorknob. Over on the end table sat the cabin guestbook, and if you flipped through the entries, half the folks before me hadn’t written about peace and quiet—they’d penned survival diaries. “Saw Mama and two cubs by the back steps!” “Big male rattled the screen at midnight!”
Outside, the trash cans weren’t ordinary garbage cans; they were heavy iron-jawed contraptions equipped with locking latches designed to keep out a creature with four-inch claws and a master’s degree in engineering.
Still, I shrugged it off. I’m from Tuscaloosa. Back home, our primary wildlife negotiations involve white-tailed deer bolting across a two-lane blacktop, mischievous raccoons trying to pry the lids off feed barrels, or a bullfrog sounding off like an old pump in a ditch. Bears are something you watch on nature documentaries or see printed on tourist post cards wearing little park ranger hats. What did I know about five-hundred-pound apex predators that consider back porches their personal cafeteria?
For the first couple of days, the cabin delivered everything I had hoped for. The mountain air was clean and cold, the silence was thick enough to lean against, and the solitude was medicine for the soul. I read, watched the tree line sway in the breeze, and completely forgot that anything like a city existed.
Then came the third morning.
I woke up well before dawn. A low, ghostly mountain mist was clinging to the hollows, turning the blue ridges into faint gray watermarks against the sky. The air had a sharp, damp bite to it—the kind of brisk mountain chill that cuts clean through a light shirt. I pulled on a heavy warm jacket, stepped quietly out onto the porch, and took a seat in one of the big wooden rockers facing east.
It was glorious. There wasn’t a breath of wind, no sound of traffic, not even an early bird stirring in the rhododendron bushes. Just cool, gray stillness waiting for that first sliver of golden light to break over the crest. I sat there for a solid half hour, hands tucked in my pockets, gently rocking on the planks, soaking in the peace of the world.
And then, I heard it.
It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t an acorn dropping off an oak tree.
It was a slow, deliberate scrape on the cedar decking around the corner. Click. Scritch. Click.
My rocking chair came to an immediate halt. Every hair on the back of my neck stood straight up on end.
There was something on the porch with me.
I sat frozen, trying not to breathe. The layout of the cabin worked against me here—because the deck wrapped around two sides and the back, I couldn’t see around the corner to the northern stretch of the walkway. The sound was steadily advancing. Tick-tick-tick… scrape.
My mind immediately flashed to that laminated warning sheet on the dining table. I thought of the guestbook. I thought of the heavy iron trash containers. My Tuscaloosa common sense went straight out the window, replaced by pure mountain folklore: A black bear has scaled the deck stairs and is coming to settle things.
The noise sounded remarkably like heavy claws scraping along rough timber boards. I had a split-second internal debate that felt like an eternity. Do I leap out of this rocker and scramble for the glass sliding door? If I run, will it trigger a predatory chase instinct? Do I stand up tall, raise my arms to look twice my size, and shout, “Hey Bear! Go on, git!” the way the park brochures tell you to do?
Before I could mount a defense or prepare to be hauled off into the Smokies, the terrifying beast rounded the timber post.
I braced myself.
Around the corner trotted a beagle.
Not an eight-foot forest monster. A floppy-eared, white-bellied, tricolor beagle pup, looking not a day over six months old.
He stopped dead in his tracks, one front paw suspended in mid-air. He looked at me sitting there in my giant jacket, and I looked down at him. If I had turned white as a sheet, he looked equally flabbergasted. His big brown eyes widened, and he let out a tiny, inquisitive sniff that sounded like a deflating tire. I think my sudden presence on that porch gave him just as big a start as his little toenails had given me.
For a few seconds, the two of us just stared at each other in the morning mist—one startled Alabama native with his knuckles still gripping the armrests of a rocker, and one neighborhood patrol pup wondering who had set up camp along his morning inspection route.
“Well, hey there, buddy,” I said softly, the adrenaline draining out of my boots.
At the sound of a calm human voice, that little hound went from startled sentry to instant friend. His tail started ticking back and forth like a metronome, swatting against the side of the cabin. With a little gentle coaxing, he trotted right on over, sniffed my shoes to make sure I wasn’t carrying anything dangerous, and leaned his head right into my hand for some vigorous behind-the-ear scratching.
He was clearly the local perimeter guard. He didn’t have a collar with a bell or any badge of office, but he had the strut of a dog that made the rounds of these rental cabins every morning just to ensure the premises were secure—and perhaps to see if anyone had dropped a breakfast biscuit off the railing. After a couple of minutes of good conversation, a pat on the ribs, and a heartfelt thanks for not being a hungry mama bear, he gave a contented snort, turned around, and trotted down the side steps to finish his neighborhood patrol.
I leaned back in the rocking chair, took a deep breath of that cold morning mountain air, and finally let out a laugh that echoed clean down into the hollow.
Right on cue, the sun began to peek over the mountain crest, burning through the lavender mist and lighting up the valleys below in gold. It was every bit as breathtaking as promised—maybe even a little sweeter, considering I was still around to see it.
A couple of days later, I made the trip down into Cades Cove to drive the loop. Sure enough, traffic slowed to a crawl, folk started pointing out their windows, and there he was: a genuine, honest-to-goodness black bear, ambling through the pasture grass without a care in the world. He was majestic, wild, and fascinating to watch. But I have to admit, I appreciated him an awful lot more from the dry, climate-controlled comfort of a locked car interior than I would have on a quiet back porch at dawn.
I spent the rest of my time at the cabin taking in every sunrise I could get. I sat in that rocker with my coffee and watched the mist lift off the peaks, just as peaceful as could be.
Only from then on, I kept one ear tuned to the birds in the trees, and the other ear cocked for the sound of claws on the cedar. You never know when the mountain wildlife is coming for a visit—even if it just turns out to be a hound dog looking for an early morning ear rub.