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Shadow of the Bear | Whiteside Mountain
Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: 2020/10 - October
This month brings a quiet frenzy among the creatures of the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau.
Foxes extend their territory to get a little fatter before the onset of winter. Squirrels get even squirrel-ier as they cache away the mast crop. And the little brown bats that shadow our evening skies put on an even more dynamic aerobatic show as they gorge on the remaining mosquitoes of the season.
And of course, this being the Plateau, it marks the arrival of The Big Bear, the bear that’s earned a national reputation.
If you’d like to witness his arrival in the latter half of October, Head east on U.S. 64 from Main Street Highlands for about five miles, until you come to Rhodes Big View Overlook (you’ll know it by the breathtaking vista). Find a safe place to park and walk to the vantage point in front of the guard rail. If you visit in the last half of October between 5:30 and 6:00 P.M., you’ll be treated to the stunning sight of the shadow of a gargantuan bear emerging from the valley at the foot of
Whiteside Mountain.
Like most features on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau, this shadowy figure, so bold in its arrival, resonated with the Cherokee who lived here first. The Cherokee revered the Black Bear for his courage and his presence as a literal force of nature. They saw signs of him everywhere – and he was revered as a spirit being as well as a powerful animal. Because they believed that a terrifying monster named Spearfinder made her home on Whiteside Mountain, the Shadow Bear’s presence at the base demonstrated his wish to protect his human neighbors.
Sure enough, the Shadow Bear shows up mid-February to early March, for just 30 minutes on sunny days at 5:30 P.M. But it’s his patrolling over Whiteside Cove in October that gets all the press.
At other times of the year, the titanic forces of earth’s rotation on its axis gum up the works, and the bear morphs into a giant mouse, anteater, and hippopotamus. None of these Shadow Creatures get any play in Cherokee Legends, and no one ever, ever, shows up to get a glimpse of a Shadow Sugar Glider.
For this month, though, the Bear clearly rules.
