Look, ma! A bear! … in downtown Denver?!

You can’t be in Denver without eventually tripping on the toes of the Big Blue Bear.

The big blue huh?

Bear. In downtown Denver. Smack dab in front of the Convention Center. Peering into the lobby.For about six years now.

Not your everyday bear sighting. Novel, certainly. And very, very safe.

Big Blue Bear has a name — of sorts. It’s “I See What You Mean.”

Again, huh?

There’s a tail, errrr, tale with that, as told here by local artist and bear birther, Lawrence Argent:

“While toying with the notion of a ‘Convention Center’ and visualizing the vast numbers of people moving through and participating with this environment, my proposal emerged as a core response to the following: meeting place; exchange of ideas, transference of information; regional western art and the thought of what that is from a non-resident’s perspective; and the natural surroundings of Colorado.”

All well and good. Yet why a bear?

“There’s iconic Colorado imagery – the Rockies, the Flatirons and all that – that I think is a little bit overused, a little passé …

“I had recently seen a photo in the newspaper of a black bear looking into someone’s window and that resonated with me.”

And the blue? An artist’s creative license perhaps?

“…That was actually an accident – originally the bear was going to reflect the colors of Colorado, with sandstone colors and things like that.

“But a printout of the design came back blue by mistake, and I thought that was much more exciting.

“And it was serendipitous, because [I learned later] that the black bear was very important to the Native American Ute tribes that lived in Colorado – and also that one level of spiritual enlightenment for the Utes was the ‘blue’ level.”

Well, spiritual enlightenment or not, one thing’s certain. You don’t stand in the way of a big bear.

All 40 feet of him.

Unless you can. And for perspective:

Advertisement