Bears And I Continued

By Maryanna Gabriel

"If you go out into the woods today prepare for a big surprise..." 

Teddy Bears Picnic composed by John Bratten

What spooked me was, as usual, people. 

Our cook tent was loaded with grub and what most especially made the whites of my eyes show was a big

.... festooning shreds (photo credit unknown)

can of bacon grease out in the open that the cook kept lying about. What better way to attract bears in a wilderness setting. Yikes. I could not convince our camp director to do something about it. I decided that my future husband and I were going to camp as far away as possible and so we did. One evening after a hard day of reconnaissance surveying we returned to our site to find one side of our tent slashed to ribbons. As I sewed the festooning shreds back together I tried not to imagine the size of the paws that made the cuts. Now I lay me down to sleep? Forget it. Every crack of the forest, and there were many, put me into a hyper-alert state as I imagined myself being a midnight snack. There were a few more bear stories but needless to say I survived the summer. The nightmares continued for years. Finally, after one fearsome night terror I dreamed I picked up a rifle and shot the bear. The bad dreams seemed to subside after that.

I continue to have a healthy and wary respect for bears for they are unpredictable. It is not by their nature, but by ours, and how we have habituated them.