The black bear’s jawbone was just sitting there on a rock beside Chattooga; a beacon of white against a moss-covered background.
It was one of those double-take moments that leave you wondering is this real?
Ellicott Rock Wilderness on the North Carolina end of the river is a place where things like the bruin’s jawbone shouldn’t come as a surprise, but does.
How did this critter meet his end? Why is only the jaw left? What’s it doing on the river; did the bear drown?
The bone doesn’t give details, but it speaks volumes about a precious resource just 90 minutes away from Greenville.
In a world that’s rapidly filling up with people, and this jawbone was just yards from a heavily used campsite where the Chattooga Trail veers away from the river to connect with Bull Pen Road, these kinds of natural moments are increasingly rare.
You have to go farther and deeper today to encounter that cold hand on your neck kind of feeling. Partially, at least, those kinds of things are what keep people coming back and what draws so many to this tiny corridor of wildness plunked down between Charlotte and Atlanta.
The wild and scenic river’s protection extends a scant quarter mile from the river’s center. For much of its length Chattooga has a pretty broad buffer of Forest Service land and Ellicott Rock’s 8,000 acres was preserved in 1975, a year after the river was designated a national treasure by an act of Congress.
If American Whitewater wins their lawsuit this stretch of river will have kayakers on it on days like the one where the bear’s jawbone was discovered. It isn’t likely that kayaking will hurt the river, but it is almost assured that the river will take a toll on those who challenge it; especially when it’s up and of a mood.
The water was rising on the river when the bone turned up. A few more minutes and the river would have been lapping at the edge of the rock.
At first it seemed likely the bone was a hog’s. A week previously, while fishing with a partner many miles downstream, a wild boar stared us down at the close of the day.
When I picked the bone up a massive canine tooth gleamed at the tip. Nothing but a bear carries that kind of equipment in this part of the world.
It had been a fruitless day of fishing to that point. Cold, wet and rainy; it should have been a perfect day on the water but things like good fishing conditions often don’t translate into good fishing.
With the bone safely tucked away in my fly vest, I changed lures and began working a streamer across and down with the current as I headed back to the trail.
It didn’t take long for the first rainbow to hit the streamer. She made a lovely picture before being put back in the water a little worse for wear.
Patting the bone through the fabric of the vest and fishing on, the second rainbow came a few yards downstream; then the third and a fourth and I was out of time. It is more than three miles from the river to Bull Pen Road and most of that is uphill.
While slogging up the dripping trail, it struck me that the bone was something of a gift from the river as were those four fish.
Nature is always red of fang and claw. The bear met its end somewhere on, or near, the river. That’s the reality of the natural world.
Things like catch and release fishing are man’s way of preserving a rare resource, but catch and release is also as artificial as the flies I use to fool trout.
That jawbone is real; it sits on the credenza next to my desk. The fish remain only as pixels in the computer.
