Bear-Papa Bear Green TB

I maintain records on my trackables. They have the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a target rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The average drop rate of my trackables in the US is 124 days, in Europe it is 71 days. As of 19-May-24 this trackable had survived for 4.3 years and had been moved by 8 cachers, for an average drop every 198 days, or 1.8 drops per year. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the U.S., please drop it at an event, in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban, non-premium cache. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and dry, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

This “Bear” series of travel bugs are each named for fictional bears of children’s literature, comic books, cartoons, mythology and animated shorts or features. 

Papa Bear.  The story of The Three Bears was first put into print in 1837 but there is ample evidence there was an oral tradition long before that.  The original version had three bachelor bears of different sizes living in the same house in the woods.  Another difference was an old woman intruder.  Details of the story were modified over the years to arrive at Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but the basic premise remained the same.

The story makes extensive use of the literary rule of three, featuring three chairs, three bowls of porridge, three beds, and the three title characters who live in the house. There are also three sequences of the bears discovering in turn that someone has been eating from their porridge, sitting in their chairs, and finally, lying in their beds, at which point is the climax of Goldilocks being discovered.

This follows three earlier sequences of Goldilocks trying the bowls of porridge, chairs, and beds successively, each time finding the third "just right".  In writing this as the "dialectical three", where the first is wrong in one way, the second in another or opposite way, and only the third, in the middle, is just right.  This idea that the way forward lies in finding an exact middle path between opposites is of extraordinary importance in storytelling.  Papa bear’s porridge, chair and bed was always too hot, hard or big.