Ursus Americanus

We’ve just returned from a camping trip, my son and I. The hubby had to stay behind and make money—which he was probably grateful for once he found out just how much excitement we experienced!

It was the two of us, plus a close friend, Beth, her husband Ben and their two kids, and we had decided to try out a new campground. Well, new to them, but I had been there before when I was younger and camped with my parents. As we pulled in, we noted besides the beauty and seclusion of the place, the many ‘Bear Warning’ signs hung on the front information board, and on the bathroom doors, and on the front door of the little campground store. (Called ‘Serves You Right’, eerily enough…)

Now I had backpacked in ‘bear’ country before, meaning the Smokey Mountain National Park, and there is a certain etiquette one must follow if one wants to stay on the upper hand of the food chain, so I started to go over these practices with my camp-mates and we agreed to have the food coolers put in the truck every night, dishes washed, dinner cooked and eaten by nightfall, clean up and burning of any food wrappers, change children who had dribbled hot cocoa or stew juice down the front of their jackets, etc.

The first night went without a hitch, and the next morning the two women took the kids on an early perusal of the campground. We saw a campsite that, the evening before, had been home to bagged up garbage remains left by some delinquent campers. Now, my friend had thought of moving the garbage the night before, (she had been the only one to see it) but had thought that the campground host would be better prepared to handle the trash and had not thought anything of it. This next morning, however, we saw that the campground host was completely remiss in taking care of his campground loop as now the garbage was strewn in a wide circle, everything carefully picked over and opened.

I got an idea to go and check out the garbage pile with a lingering notion in my head. Sure enough, after looking through the wreckage, I spotted a ‘Sierra Mist’ soda can with a neat hole about half an inch across with a torn edge and a scrape mark on the opposite side that could only mean one thing—large tooth hole, decent sized bite expanse, had to have been a bear. Nothing else has canines that big, unless it was a VERY large dog, and we hadn’t heard a thing the night before. (My son and I were sleeping in the tent, whereas the other family was sleeping in a hard-shell camper.) There were also some scratch marks in the dirt around the garbage clearly made by claws, though the size of the foot was indeterminable. I took the can as a souvenir.

We ended up moving farther down the loop next to a stream that day, into a bigger site. The day went along wonderfully, with Ben and I cooking the evening meal while Beth and the kids went down to the stream. After dinner, we had roasted marshmallows then put the little ones to bed. (After a walk down to the bathrooms to brush sugary teeth). My son was in the tent with the screen closed but the outer flap open so that I could glance in at him from my seat by the fire. The adults sat up talking and laughing and drinking hot chocolate with Bailey’s in it while burning a fire late into the night.

Now I am not a nervous person by nature, but things were starting to add up in the back of my head concerning these bear warnings and the garbage, so every time I heard a crack or noise in the woods, I would freeze for a moment and listen to see if I could tell if the sound heralded small furry friend or potential large furry foe. Beth has substantial hearing difficulties, so every time I cocked my head and stopped talking, she would freak out a little bit, wondering what I’d heard, etc. She started ribbing me for making her worry, until I uttered the fateful words to her, “One day you’ll get to see a bear close and personal, and you’ll see how it changes the way you feel about them.” I know, I might as well have washed my car and watched it rain for the next four days.

I have seen black bears before, while hiking. Most of them minded their own business, showing you their shiny black bottoms as they headed off into the brush to get as far away from you, the intruder, as possible. Once my parents and I had had a she-bear with cubs raid a ‘bear proof shelter’ (har har) while we were off on a day-hike, only to high-tail it off a little ways when we showed back up. She stopped to rifle through our food bag, but only because she had sent her cubs up the tree she parked under. There was no way my father could scare her off with the babies overheard, so we had just packed up and waited for her to move off so that we could head back to our car. (No food = no backpacking)

So you can imagine just how surprised I was when Ben hit the light (1,000,000 candle-powered spot light, now affectionately referred to as the ‘Man Torch’)
and pointed it over the dogs in the kennel to a place a few feet behind the picnic tables, and said calmly, “It’s a bear.”
The dogs had been growling under their breath for a few minutes, woofing quietly here and there, until the older one had barked quite a bit in succession. Now we knew why. I turned to look and said, “It’s a bear,” too, just to make sure he had confirmation. Something large and black was moving on the other side of the tables, filling the space in between two of them. Ben stood, and he was 6’4”, and I sidled up beside him as he pinned the bear’s face with the light. Beth stood behind us, finally realizing that we weren’t just playing a trick on her, and mentioned under her breath, “Grace, D’s in the tent.”

At that point, my heart went into overdrive. This bear had not, as I had hoped beyond hope, turned tail to run off at the sight of a light bright enough to burn out his retinas hovering some six-plus feet off the ground. Instead I watched him as he docilely turned his head to the side to see if the light might not be so bad on the other side of the tables.

The side closer to my boy sleeping in his tent.

“Ben, I’m going to get D.” He heard the conviction in my voice and so walked to that side of the table, shining that light that was a beacon of hope into the face of the bear while keeping an eye on me who was scrabbling behind him to the tent to forcibly drag my sleeping son from his warm cocoon of blankets, all the time saying sharply into his face, “D, wake up! Stand up, D! Up, D!” he finally got his feet under him and I handed him out the tent to Beth who whisked him away to the hard-shell. As soon as I knew she had him, I went to stand beside Ben to fortify our stance, and to watch as the bear very slowly made his way down the hill, apparently not pleased, though certainly by NO means scared, by the light and the noise.

Needless to say, we all spent the night in the hard-shell with my son and I snuggled up on the thick foam on the floor, and the three adults yakking until two thirty a.m., waiting for the adrenaline to spend itself out in our bloodstreams. The next morning we moved again, to a campground that backs up to a fairly busy road, which also apparently discourages the bears. It was also tended much more meticulously, and hadn’t had a sighting all season. That was music to our ears.

I love bears, seriously, and to see one is tantamount to magic in my eyes. They’re beautiful, graceful, and very respectful usually. The bear we saw had been contaminated by terrible human habits, and I can only hope that he learns over time that humans are dangerous to his health, not a signal for snack-time to commence. A host on a lower loop had spotted him the same night he had come into our campsite and said he hit him in the butt with a load of buckshot to scare him off. (It spreads out and, according to the host, doesn’t penetrate their skin but sure does smart a ton) So I’m hopeful he’ll get the idea eventually, instead of pushing his luck so much that he becomes a threat to humans. It’s a losing battle in that direction, for everyone involved.

Long live the black bears…

http://www.bear.org/Black/BB_Home.html

http://www.nps.gov/grsm/