My Close Encounter of the Bear Kind

The most amazing thing happened the other night; but first, some context:

I'm what could be called a serious walker. If I've got an hour to kill, nowhere to be and no one asking or expecting anything of me, I can think of few things I'd rather be doing than walking. As Forrest Gump found himself compelled to run, I've always felt compelled to walk.

When I was younger, before having a family and home life, I walked all the time; walked so much I became known amongst the local teenagers, or so it got back to me once, as 'that guy who walks around town at night.' Responsibilities, long work days and a multitude of other time constraints have curbed the habit. But I do what I can, when I can.

I walk the same route every time. There's no apparent reason for this, no deeply rooted psychological impulses at play that I can identify. I've simply been going the same way for years, and with few exceptions have never been inclined to try something new. I chalk it up to being a creature of habit, and anyway, my route is a pretty good way to see as much of what's going on as possible. I live in a small town, and my walk takes me through the community's various neighborhoods - downtown, through the park, along the lakeshore. This diversity has allowed me to witness a lot of things over the years, a veritable good, bad and ugly exhibit of my hometown - from drunks passed out on sidewalk steps to deer foraging in people's gardens, their necks extended giraffe-like to reach the low branches of crabapple or acorn trees, a crescent moon just dipping below the tree line behind them.

I've witnessed house fires while out walking, lightning strikes, bar fights, domestic squabbles, Little League baseball games, joggers, cyclists, ATV riders, jet skiers, wind surfers, horseback riders, drag racers and even someone who fell off his roof trying to rid the eaves of his house of a hornet's nest. That was a crazy scene for five or ten minutes: I actually saw him fall, and suddenly found myself in the hat trick attempt of a lifetime: untangling him from his ladder, dialing 9-1-1 on my cell, and swatting at agitated bees.

There have been plenty of animal encounters over the years. From angry bees to angry blue jays swooping out of the sky, to wood ticks lurking in the grassy areas of the park, waiting for me to come just a little too close, to house cats that routinely come out into the street and smile at me, to a gigantic rat I saw waddling down Main Street once late at night. No joke...this thing was the size of a small dog, and shaped like an engorged wood tick...the same anemic gray color. Before I realized fully what it was (that is, before I could shriek like a pre-teen girl), it slipped down a storm grate into the sewer; the last thing I saw was its unnaturally thick tail swish left and righ before vanishing down that grate. To this day its a little unsettling to know rats grow that large beneath the (mostly) quiet streets of my hometown.

And of course, I've endured numerous dog encounters over the years. What walker - from the casual evening stroller to the paper boy or mail carrier tending his appointed rounds - hasn't?

And so it was that I was out taking a walk last weekend. Just another night; the weather's getting warmer (finally), might as well take advantage of it, I thought. I'm always happy for company when I walk, but more often than not, especially lately, I go alone.

It was about 8:30. The sun had set, the last light of day situated somewhere between civil and nautical dusk. With each passing moment, objects were becoming less disginguisable, except for street lights and the glow coming through the living room windows of the homes I passed.
I reached the top of my avenue, a spot where it curves to the right and intersects another street. On one side is my very residential neighborhood. On the other side, woods that cross a ravine and go on for close to a mile.

As I was rounding this corner, hoofing along at a good pace and already dancing about inside my head (that is, hardly aware of what was going on around me), I heard a loud huffing sound.

Perhaps this requires a meatier description. Remember the movie Jurassic Park? The sound of the T-Rex? It wasn't just a roar, as countless similar creatures had been represented in movies past. The producers of Jurassic... took it to the next level; they recorded numerous wailing sounds, most notably a young elephant, mixed them, lowered them, amplified them, and in doing so created this rich, textured bellow that most movie goers will never forget.

That same phenomenon was present here. It wasn't a huff I heard, exactly, something more; a three-dimensional blast of air, a 20-ton lurching of sound in my ears, at a velocity I could almost see as well as hear.

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked up. 15 feet in front of me was the unmistakable side-view silhouette of a black bear standing in the middle of the road. Off to the right, still protected by arborvitae lining a neigbor's yard, were four cubs. They were nervously pacing about, falling over each other, wondering what they should do next. But the mother remained stock still, watching me.

Less than a second later she huffed again, with the same kind of freight-train volume and velocity. Then she took three or four steps toward me, each one a bit more of a lunge.

When I was a kid, I had the misfortune of being engulfed in flames for a number of seconds, and at the time I was very lucky that clear-thinking instinct kicked in - I did what I had always been told I should do by the fire marshall whenever he came and gave a safety speech at school.

Stop, drop and roll.
In the midst of panicked screaming over the fact that I was suddenly on fire, I actually had the presence of mind to remember this neatly packaged, kid-friendly protocol. And so I stopped, I dropped and I rolled several feet across the grass of my friend's front yard. The fire was extinguished, and my action likely prevented the flames from spreading. As it was, I received third degree burns on my chest; I cringe to this day thinking of the burn spreading to my face and hair.

But it didn't; and I walked away from that incident with a new appreciation for safety instructions.

Now I found myself in a similar situation: one of potential danger, a mother bear taking several aggressive steps toward me, and another much bandied-about protocol flashed in my head. Like 'stop, drop and roll', it was advice I'd heard many times in my life, in virtually every nature magazine I read as a kid, every Discovery Channel special I've ever watched on the subject, countless bear survival videos I've pulled up on YouTube - lauded as SOP (standard operating procedure) when confronted by any bear that appears hostile.

Like 'stop, drop and roll', I didn't quite realize I was doing it; it was mostly a knee-jerk reaction. I certainly held no conscious belief that it would actually work, but I instinctively raised my hands up and cried out, "Bear! Yo! Bear!"

90 percent of the time, black bear pose no threat. They are smaller than their grizzly or polar cousins, much shyer, and much less likely to consider human beings food. Nevertheless, they are bears, and I'd had the misfortune of unexpectedly running into a sow with four cubs. In the interest of protecting them, she was capable of becoming just as ferocious as any grizzly.

"Bear! Yo! Bear!"

Chanting this a second and third time, with arms raised, kept her bluff charge from turning into a real attack. She halted, but kept looking at me with this strange sideways tilt of her head as I backed away slowly.

"Bear! Yo! Bear!"

The cubs huddled up near the arborvitae, nervously pacing about, frightened of me but not about to stray too far from mama, even to flee. Only when I had backed up a suitable distance did she turn toward the woods and make her way across the road, the cubs following in an adorably loping manner behind her.

She kept her eyes locked on me until she had disappeared into the thicket on the opposite side. She waited until her cubs went in first.

I got to admit, it was an unnerving experience. But neither her hostility and distrust of me, nor the momentary threat to my safety she posed could squelch the magnificence of the moment.

I've seen a lot of things out walking, but this was my first close encounter with a bear. I can't say I would ever want this to happen again, but it's worth a moment or two of fright to be lucky enough to live in a community where the woods are never really out of sight, where nature is always close by.