Black Rocks

Today little bear was down by the river again, but he keeps getting distracted from the flowing water by all sorts of other interesting things. For example, today there was the mystery of the black rocks!

Little bear has seen enough rocks to know that they come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes... he's turning into quite a little earth scientist and naturalist actually. But today, he was poking along the river bank and came across this...

There were these black things in between all of the rocks... they sort of looked like rocks... but not quite... and when he examined it much more closely, he discovered that the black stuff was kind of soft and not hard like real rocks.

Plus, there were some branches that had black stuff at the end of them as well... Hmmm... little bear was a tad perplexed. The black stuff wasn't everywhere - it was just in one localized area.

What could it be?? Little bear muttered and stalked around the black stuff and put his thinking cap on... but he doesn't have enough information at this point. He'l file it away for later processing! Or he could just ask for an explanation... which he does... But that doesn't help him much either! The black stuff is the remains of wood after it has been burnt in a fire. Uh... little bear knows fire from candles... but he is having trouble picturing how wood fits into this! Little bear is assured that he will meet a wood fire at some point! Which is enough for little bear. He is content to know that at some point in his future, he will encounter something magical called "campfire"...