TAKE THAT! (With Bear Scat...)

I wrote a rather long and hard to sort tale awhile back about falling off the side of a house and bruising my heel, then going on a backpacking trip with the bruise fully penetrating my bones and nerves, and then ending up many years later telling a big dude at a bar how much I knew a guy just like him when it turned out to be him that I knew.

I would read it if I hadn’t.

I left out a bunch of bits in the middle of that tale, as all tales have bits that can’t be told, at least not all in one sitting.

So after falling barefoot from ten or twelve feet and landing hard on one heel, I was sure that the deep bruise would heal by the time we actually got to where we were going- so I set off with my friend Rolf and G in G’s 66 Chevy pick-up and we headed north with maps and backpacks and my female Siberian Husky, Meisha, and we drove up into someplace that sounded cool and far away and mysterious and mystical- The Marble Mountains.

On our way in, traveling on small highways now, looking for a dirt road turn-off, we picked up a guy hitchhiking with an enormous black eye.

“What happened to you?”

“Hummingbird! Damn hummingbird, man! It flew in my window and hit me in the eye.”

“Oh shit!”

“Yeah, oh shit! I drove off the mother fuckin’ road and down this steep embankment and totaled my car.”

But that’s not the story I wanted to tell you about.

I wanted to tell you about the bear that shat on my name.

Truly.

Took out the C and the O completely, and left a turd stranded over the S and another one on top of the last T’. The sun was starting to sink below the mountain ridge to my west, and the scat scared me shitless, if that makes any sense.

G and I and Rolf spent the first night next to the truck. We all got up early and started walking. We had about an 18 mile goal set for the day, and as is usually the case with backpacking trips here in the West, you tend to start them around 4,000 feet in elevation, and you climb up to about 6,500 feet to a pristine lake where you stay a few days and you catch trout and suffer from mosquitoes. Hiking in, there tends to be quite a few areas where all you do is slog up switchbacks and hope your heart stays in your chest. Good healthy, clean fun. It makes the trips enjoyable because you suffer the most while you anticipate the most. Then, when you want to go home because you are hungry for grease and sugar and a hot shower, your walk is downhill and fast.

So the three of us sixteen year olds woke early and packed our gear and started the long and arduous first days walk. My heel was hurting me with every step, and I grabbed a walking stick from the woods and did the best I could. Normally, with my long legs, keeping up with the two shorter boys would have been easy for me, but with the bruise, I kept falling behind with my dog circling back to check on me every so often. It was all I could do to just zone out and walk, ignoring how much my foot hurt. Every now and then, I would come upon Rolf and G, and they would be sitting there waiting for me, taking a nice break, eating granola with M and M’s and washing it all down with drinking water. When I got there, they would be antsy to leave, and I would be antsy to sit down and rest.

Half the day went by like this. It got apparent that I shouldn’t stop because my foot hurt more after I stopped and started again, and Rolf and G were also getting tired of waiting.

“You guys go on ahead. Set up camp and get dinner ready. I’ll get there. It’s easier if I just zone out and walk.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. If you come to any fork in the trail, write my name in the dirt and mark it somehow with an arrow, so I know which way you went.”

We pulled out maps and verified where we wanted to go, and pretty soon I was alone with my dog, in the middle of nowhere, limping badly and walking with a stick, humming some of my favorite walking-humming tunes…

Four hours later I was in quite a state. Not a bad state, just a state. I had turned my thoughts off and ignored the pain in my foot. I was just a walker. I had tuned in to the rhythm of my walking. Chit coop bunk… Chit coop bunk…

Even my black and white Husky was tired and panting heavily in front of me, not bothering to run ahead and back behind like she had done most of the day.

It must have been about six in the evening (summertime light) when I came upon the first of two forks. I looked on the ground in the dirt. Sure enough, G and Rolf had written my name in the dirt. They had stacked a pyramid of rocks there too. They had used rocks to fashion a very obvious arrow. That way…

Good boys.

About five feet that way I noticed my name again, and a small arrow pointing to a circle in the dirt. Inside that circle was a set of bear footprints. A bear looked like he had crossed the path right here and continued on.

It was a fairly large bear by the looks of the footprint.

Okay…

Thanks, boys, for pointing that out. Now instead of zoning out and walking and humming, I had alert eyes and ears and a whistle going. I had no desire to come upon a bear without giving him advanced warning. I whistled my favorite keep bears away tune “Dixie”

“Look away… look away… run away… little bear…”

The sun was sure getting low in the sky up against the tall peaks to my west.

My dog sure was looking tired and smallish all of a sudden.

I put my stick down and replaced it with a staff. A tall one. Like eight feet tall and two and a half inches around. I started to imagine driving the end of this staff into the attacking bears mouth, pushing it in until he gagged and choked and sputtered and ran off. What other plan did I have?

Maybe a poke in the eye with the narrower end, then flip the staff over Bruce Lee style and ram the throat. Yeah. That was better. An eye... An eye... A deep-throat assault. I’d be Okay…

Twilight arrived and I was truly getting paranoid. I had no idea how much further I needed to walk. My foot was throbbing. My mind wouldn’t shut down far enough- what with the threat of a bear assault- to ignore the pain. It was getting a bit windy and cold. I was hungry and tired and my cheeks were tired of whistling…

I came upon the second fork. There was my name again. There was the pyramid of rocks, and there was the arrow.

On top of my name, though, was a giant pile of bear scat. It was fresh, but not steaming. That meant two things.

G and Rolf had been here quite some time ago. Maybe three hours or more. Jesus, was I walking THAT slow? I had no way to gauge, and I worried that I’d never catch up to them. It also meant that the bear had been there AFTER the boys had. Meaning the bear was less than three hours from where I stood. It meant the bear could be right around the next bend or up the next hill, or just behind me following me…

Maybe the bear had followed my friends and instead of dinner being ready… well… there would be a bear waiting for dinner…


1. Do not provoke animals. Do not corner or provoke a bear.
2. Never approach an animal when it is with young.
3. Do not disturb a feeding animal. Do not explore into its feeding territory or disrupt mating patterns.
4. In bear country, hang all food off the ground in trees away from the campsite. Never keep food or captured game inside a tent. Use proper food storage to keep food away from bears. Cook at a site away from the sleeping area. Do not sleep in clothes worn while cooking or eating.
5. Make noise when hiking, particularly on narrow paths or through tall grass. If you confront a brown (grizzly) bear, avoid eye contact and try to slowly back away. If you confront a black bear, shout, yell, throw rocks or sticks, or do whatever you can to frighten off the animal.
6. If attacked by a bear, do not try to outrun it - you can’t. Cover your head and the back of your neck with your arms and curl into a fetal position or lay flat on the ground, face down, in order to protect your abdomen. If you are wearing a backpack, keep it on for additional protection. Use your elbows to cover your face if a bear turns you over. After a bear attack, remain on the ground until you are certain that the bear has left the area. More than one victim has successfully protected himself during the initial attack, only to arise too soon (before the bear has lost interest and left the area) and be mauled during the second attack.

The sun was being eaten by a black mountain to my west. My foot was not going to allow me to run from any bear. I would have to stand there, and avoid eye contact (what if the bear stood on its hind legs and growled directly AT ME? How could I not look at the bear?)

I continued on. Dark was hurrying me along. I was a kid with a dog with a bruised heel clomping away from scat. For almost forty minutes I scurried. I kept trying to keep my whistle going. Every damn dark stump became a bear and everything my dog perked her ears up at became a bear. There were bears hidden everywhere. All as dark as night, and night was chasing me. Up ahead, above me and still one long switchback to walk, I saw a fire bouncing off of a large rock. A stream of urine came raining down to my right, and I recognized the smell. Way above me, was Rolf and his very recognizable appendage trying to pee on me.

“Bastard!”

But I had made it.

It took me a good fifteen minutes to climb this last set of switchbacks. I was knackered. I was hungry. I was tired of looking out for bears.
Bears everywhere.


Food was ready when I arrived. I ate. I told the boys about the bear prints and the bear scat, and they seemed suitably worried.

We gathered everything that smelled of food and walked away from camp a distance and hung it all in a tree. When we settled back at camp, G began making bear paw prints in the dirt while we sat around the fire and told teen stories about the vaginas that eluded us and the cars we wanted to own.

G’s paw prints looked suspiciously like the ones I had seen pointed out to me by… Rolf and G…

I looked at the two more closely…

I’d known G since we were both six year olds. If he was up to something, I could sense it. I knew his tells. I knew that if I looked at him directly he’d betray a slight smirk that he couldn’t control.

OH THOSE BASTARDS!

When they stopped laughing they told me they collected the scat by the river not an hour from the truck. They sprinkled water on it to “freshen” it up. They had carried it in a plastic zip-lock bag full of air. They had worked out where the two forks were. They had had a great laugh at my expense.

OH THOSE BASTARDS!

Two days later, a bear came into our camp while we were off climbing a peak. My tent was the only one spared.