Date: 2004-03-01
To: The Bear and the Raven
Miles today: 0.0

Winnie the Pooh might make one think that bears are cuddly and cute. My only backwoods encounter with a bear though revealed no cuteness to their demeanour. Instead, I learned that the black bear can be feral, determined, irate, and not-too-easily scared off by silly little humans. In preperation for the Appalachian Trail hike this year, I have thought quite a bit about bears. After all, even though we got away okay, the one bear who gave me and a friend such a hassle in the woods of British Columbia went on to severely maul a German tourist the very next day. And the visits he gave us that early June evening - and at dawn the next day - left a strong negative impact. I think that it only through tenacity, awareness and blind, stupid luck that neither me or my friend got mauled.Well. We did have the help of a raven, too.It had been raining for around two days on us as we were canoeing the Bowron Lake Circuit. And that day the constant rain and drizzle finally stopped. The views were incredible, and we were heartened by the weather, so my friend and I decided we'd push on a little bit longer. The sun was behind the mountains as we glided in to the place we'd decided to stay for the evening. The next campspot (you could only stay at spots determined and approved by the park for reasons that will become clear) was miles away, and we were spent from a day of hard paddling.I made the discovery soon after lighting on ground and checking out the camp spot. There on the dirt close to the shore was a bear print. The print wasn't clearly defined: its edges were eroded and softened by rainfall. The amount of erosion to the print, and the fact that it had not been drizzling since the day before, drew us to theorize it was well over 24 hours old. Perhaps two days. We were hungry and tired, so we decided to be alert and set up camp anyway. The site, like all in the park, had "bear caches" - a platform which was suspended around 15' off the ground that was hung between two trees. The trees had metal wrapped around their bases to prevent the black bears from climbing up. The metal casing at this site was scarred and gouged from previous efforts of woodland animals of great strength attempting to gain some traction on the tree. We were a bit nervous. But hunger and tiredness prevailed, and we made a quick hot meal, cleaned up, and then set our food up the cache and made the tent. Ready for bed, I walked towards the shore to splash some water on my face and brush my teeth. And I noticed there was a large mobile shadow beside our canoe. This shadow, dwarfing the canoe, started batting the side of the canoe. I went back to inform my friend that we had a visitor... A visitor who looked like he never wanted us to leave that spot.Central British Columbia is pretty far north on the globe, so even though it was close to eleven PM, there was still a vague twilight. We cautiously approached the shore, prepared to make some noise and try to look really large to try to scare the bear off. Or at the very least suss out how he'd react to us. He wasn't scared, but he did slink off into the shadows. The shadows, were of course everywhere, and in that strange not-yet-night twilight the forest seemed suddenly filled with the possibility of bear everywhere. We faced away from our little fire, and its flickers seemed to make bear-like shadows in all directions. Then, finally, he fearlessly emerged from the features of the night. Our guest was not going to be going soon.Here begins a long, drawn-out psycho drama which involves the bear becoming increasingly uncaring about our noise-levels, or how large we loom. He'd come closer, the back off to circle a bit, only to approach again. His mannerisms became more aggressive. He also blocked us from collecting our tent, and if we were to try to collect our food and split, that would have left just one of us on the ground. It was nerve-wracking as you can imagine.As the bear's aggresive qualities seemed to increase, and as it got closer, I started to wonder if I'd soon have to find myself facing and attack - and trying to fight back against this formidable creature. The axe was at the ready, just in case. Then finally, on an approach that seemed more bold than any he'd yet made, I picked up the site's aluminum ladder (used to access the bear cache), lifted it above my head, yelled, then threw it down in front of the approaching bear.That did the trick. The bear turned and hightailed it. We could hear it crashing in the otherwise silent woods. After a while he seemed like he must have been over a kilometer away. We could hear dim echoes of faintly snapping branches under his fleeing paws. This of course left us in a dillemma. After the adrenaline faded, we were exhausted. And the bear was obviously far away. Would it keep away? With the only other camping spot a couple hours of paddling away, we decided that we'd take a chance. Dawn would be coming soon (the nights being very short then), so we decided to catch a bit of a rest anyway.We made some contingency plans before falling into needed sleep. If we heard the sounds of the bear outside our tent, we'd try to make some noise to make it back off from the tent at least, so we could deal with the situation from there. I can do a pretty decent and loud dog impression. My friend had no animal impressions he could make, so he said, "Ah, tell you what. You do the dog sound, and I'll, um, make a monkey impression!" We laughed tiredly, and fell asleep.A hard impact against my head woke me up some unknown amount of time later. Confused, alarmed I woke up, and could clearly hear the animal's huffing breathing outside the tent and his slow scurrying. I elbowed my friend, and - as per our decision - started to bark like a dog. As my friend started making his high-pitched monkey impression ("eee-eee-eee-eee!") I have to confess it was only the peril at hand that kept me from bursting out laughing. It was absurd and almost wonderful. We stopped, and listened, and could no longer hear the bear outside the tent. I wondered if my friend's monkey impression had startled the bear so much that he ran off again. But no, when we popped our heads out the tent, we saw that the bear was underneath the bear cache. We cautiously approached and saw there was trail mix of ours on the ground underneath the cache."Did he get up to our cache?!" I asked myself and my friend, not seeing how he could have done so. Regardless of the seeming impossibility of food being scattered there, there it was. And the bear was enjoying it. We set off to try to scare the bear away again, and in the light of day it was much easier than the night before. I believe that the bear's poor eyesight had worked to our disadvantage the previous night: our looming, and trying to look large fell on largely blind eyes that weren't impressed with our desperate theatrics. In the day though, our arms above our heads and making noise, we were able to get the bear to retreat. There was no crashing through the woods this time though. The bear merely sullenly retreated. He'd had the taste of food now and he didn't want to let it slip by that easily. With our tent hastily packed, we were about to grab the ladder for the bear cache when we learned why our food was scattered on the ground. A raven - one of the majestic west coast variety, with their vast wingspans - lighted upon our packs. Then it continued to dig through the hole it had presumably torn in the pack earlier. As we watched, more trail mix fell to the ground.That mystery solved, we shooed the bird away and retrieved our packs and quickly got ready to leave that site of hungry animals and birds. As we pulled away from shore, the black bear came down to the waterside and balefully watched us depart. We felt triumphant and let out victory cries as we paddled away.Our canoe trip continued on easily and without any further harrowing encounters. Though I did find myself sharing some shoreline with a bull moose who seemed uncaring of my proximity to him. And there was a 25" rainbow trout that I'd fought with for a while, but his size was on par with his fight - his over the limit size saw to it that he lived to see another day. And I was fine with that. There were other moose in the wetlands, and all around there seemed to be ravens, ready to do mischief at a moment's notice.When we made it to the end of the canoe circuit, we gratefully went into a lodge to get some hot grub. The waitress asked us how our journey went. We told her it was great, and remarked on our encounter with the bear. Enough time had passed that we were unphased by it - of course we had ended up safe, and maybe we'd come to believe incorrectly at the time that there had been any threat of danger to us at all. The waitress was shaken. Then she let us know that the day after our visit from the bear that a German tourist had been severely mauled by a bear very close to where we were camping. The bear had been dragging the man back towards the woods. The man's fiancee had to attack the bear with a hatchet to make it back off. Then she had to drag him to someplace relatively safe (a cabin was close at hand, luckily), and paddle a couple hours to make the closest ranger station. All the while the man in the cabin, phasing in and out of consciousness, heard the bear growling and pawing around just outside the cabin's door. He ended up being air-lifted to Washington for emergency treatment. And the bear ended up being shot."You boys were very, very lucky," she let us know.And we knew it.Afterwards I kept on going over the events of that morning in the woods. The strength of that swinging paw that batted my head, waking me that morning. I think of it still. Things could have gone in an incredibly different direction right then...Long after the trip was concluded it occured to me that if it had not been for the scent of the trail mix on the ground, the bear could very well have attacked me then and there. It was hungry. And obviously hungry enough that attacking humans was within its capacity. But, a cunning raven tore into our packs. A cunning raven is probably responsible for me making it through that morning and leaving there unscathed. Not to mention, alive.No wonder the west coast natives had venerated that bird! Intelligent. Aloof. Aspects of the trickster. And casually exchanging some trail mix for health and wellbeing. Seems like a good exchange to me.I venerate you too, Raven. And if I ever get another tattoo, I'll consider getting your likeness done on me. Afterall, a tattoo is nothing compared to the skin/body damage I could have otherwise received.One last thing - this all said, I'm not going to be taking "bear mace" with me on the trail this year. I think there's something strange to the way that fear can play with your thoughts. I'd rather not have it.Yes, I'll be cautious. And I'll bearbag it in the places where it's smart to. But otherwise, it'll be one foot in front of the other. And if I see a bear, I will be respectful and hope and trust that the animal has the same approach.And if not, well, I can always make monkey noises, eh?- Whoa