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Sunday, June 22, 2003
BEAR
Bear scare me. In the four or five years that I've been hiking I've encountered bear four times.
The first was about 3 years ago:
I had hiked down to the end of trail 257 and was looking for trail 227 or an alternative route via the logging roads back up to where I'd started. I hadn't found trail 227 yet as it was obscured with windfalls at the intersection with trail 257. So I followed 257 across the muddy stream out to an abandoned logging road which I followed uphill expecting to eventually connect with the road on which I'd left my car. The road was like a green river of grass. I hadn't gone far when I noticed a large pile of bear-scat. I didn't think much about it and kept on hiking. About a half a mile on, as I rounded a bend in the road, a huge hairy brown rump confronted me. This rump was the high point of the critter. It's snout and front paws were busy worrying some very small hidden thing on the ground. No more than 25 ft. in front of me, I could have easily hit that broad hairy target with an underhand toss.
But this is all afterthought. In actuality, before the word b e a r had time to form in my mind, my feet had begun to think for themselves, in reverse. I had walked backwards around the bend and several yards down the road in a motion as liquid as a dream. Then I regained command of my feet, turned myself around to face the direction of my movement and rapidly put distance between me and the beast. Each time I rounded another bend or was eclipsed by another obstacle I breathed a sigh of relief.
When I came to the pile of scat I made a mental note of how fresh it was and stored the image away in my mind to compare with future examples.
The other three encounters took place over the course of two or three years on the dirt road that takes off to the east toward Beauty Saddle about 5 mi. up Beauty Creek Road. Twice, a small black bear charged up out of a ravine, crossed the road in front of me, and scampered up the bank on the other side disappearing into the brush and trees.
The first time I saw him he was so little and cute I expected his mother to be nearby. I stood in the road a while, waiting to see if she'd appear. She didn't. So after another while I proceeded up the road singing.
One day I had hiked up past Beauty Saddle and was coming back down the dirt road toward Beauty Creek Road. I was walking down the outside edge of the road. Several yards ahead I noticed what appeared to be a black stump. My feet slowed. An awareness dawned that I had not passed a black stump in that particular spot on my outward hike. My feet stopped. My eyes strained. Suddenly the black stump doubled in height. He was about my own height, upright. Now I could make out the bear's snout reading the odors in the air. Facing me, his eyes strained. There he stood on his hind legs looking at me. There I stood on my hind legs looking at him. Finally, I took a deep breath and in as deep a voice as I could muster, I bellowed, "Hellloooo!" He dropped to all fours and loped off into the trees.
Click here for a photo of a bear print in the mud on the Marie Creek Trail from April 27, 2003.
John 1:56 PM
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