Himself called from the cabin yesterday evening. “I have an idea,” he said. “Let’s drive up to Tom Miner and see if we can see bears.”

I was in the middle of a project — I took on some freelance work that overlaps with the job-I’ve-quit-but-am-still-working-out-my-notice. I wasn’t at a great stopping place, and today is going to be a crunch, but when your person calls to ask if you want to go bear watching, you say “Great idea!” and “I’m getting in the car.”

So that’s what we did. We loaded up the binoculars, a cooler, the dog and headed up Tom Miner Basin, which is one of the most spectacular places on earth. It’s almost all private land, which makes it not much of a resource for those of us who like to hike, but it’s managed really well, and we’d been hearing rumors that folks were seeing bears from the road.

And there were bears. In one meadow, we watched two young-ish bears grazing on something. The Tom Miner Basin Association website says it’s caraway, which is invasive in some of those meadows, but which also provides good tubers for bears. They were lovely bears — maybe three or four years old, silvertip coats, distinctive humps and dished faces. And they were just right over there — maybe 50 yards away — grazing peacefully despite the four or five cars of us watching.

A car came by and asked us if we’d been “up to the top” yet? They said there had been nine bears up there the night before, in a meadow. Which is pretty astonishing. Tom Miner is known for bears, but as Himself said when we saw those first two hanging out, “I didn’t think it’d be this easy.”

We stuck around and watched the two juveniles for a while, and glassed the basin up behind them, and generally were just glad to be there. It’s a stunning basin any time, but the sun was setting and the gold meadows were gleaming against the dark fir forest, and there were spectacular peaks and pink clouds up above.

We drove further up the road to where a bunch of folks had pulled over. It was like a cocktail party, with bears. People had big spotting scopes, and were chatting quietly among themselves, and watching out across the meadow. There was one sow with two cubs, who we watched for a while, and a herd of cattle behind them, and neither the bears nor the cattle seemed the slightest bit bothered by one another. Clearly they all knew one another, and were used to hanging out together in the evenings.

The viewing party was a little noisy for us, so we drove up to the campground at the top of the road and turned around. There was a big herd of goats all tucked up for the night behind an electric fence — Hank-dog was very interested in them. There were campers. There was cattle, and some deer, and who knows what hanging out down in those willow thickets below the road. There were peaks and sunset and a big white moon coming up.

It was pretty perfect as a Saturday night goes. And then this morning when we woke up, the hummingbirds were having air wars over the feeder, so we watched that quietly for a while while drinking coffee.