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| Image by Malene Thyssen from Wikimedia Commons |
My friend, Beth, recently posted on Facebook a picture of
her local Alaskan newspaper’s crime report. Apparently, during the third week
in January, her local police department investigated zero bear complaints. She
was delighted that “bear complaints” are a standing category in this report.
Further conversation revealed that she is looking forward to someday lodging a
bear complaint of her very own.
Now, let me tell you that all my life, I’ve wanted to see a
bear. Growing up in West Virginia, it seemed like everyone I knew had a bear
story. Chuck, my mother’s boyfriend when I was a teenager, told a story about
getting between a mother and her cubs which, surprisingly, didn’t end with him
getting eaten, which was unfortunate because him getting eaten would have made
the world a better place. Herb, the boyfriend before Chuck, told a story about
sleeping on the front porch on a hot summer night and waking up to one of his
hunting dogs licking his face. But when he went to shove the dog away, he was
surprised to discover that it was not a dog, but a black bear.
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| Image by Diginatur from Wikimedia Commons |
“That’s why you should always wash your face before you go to bed,” said my mother, who liked to tell me that ferrets would eat my lips in the night if I didn’t wash my face before bed. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I’ve been not washing my face before bed for at least fifteen years, and nothing has eaten my face or lips yet. Technically, that bear didn’t even eat Herb’s face, it just licked it a little bit. Also, I feel like if there’s a lesson to be taken from Herb’s story, it’s “don’t sleep on the front porch,” not “wash your face to keep bears from eating it in your sleep.”
But I digress. In spite of the fact that everyone around me
seems to have seen, shot at, run from, been licked by, eaten, or married a
bear, I have never seen a bear. I mean, I’ve seen bears in the zoo, but that
doesn’t count. For all I know, those aren’t even real bears. They’re doing all
kinds of things with technology these days.
I want to see a bear, but I guess they’re more elusive than
I’d been led to believe. Another friend of mine hiked the whole Appalachian
Trail and only saw one bear, and that one was in Maine. Imagine walking in the
woods for six months straight and only seeing one bear.
My mother often took me camping on my grandparents' land
when I was a girl, and on these trips, I kept my eyes peeled for bear. My
mother encouraged this by saying things like, "Guy Phillips saw a bear
down here yesterday," or, "See that path? That was definitely made by
a bear." Eventually I realized that bear didn't live on my grandparents'
land, the outskirts of which was relatively well-settled.
Jim and I recently visited the Great Smoky Mountains
National Park, where I had hoped to finally see a bear. I insisted that we go
to Balsam Mountain Campground, because online reviewers had posted photos of
bear wondering amongst the campsites. I want to see a bear, but I don't want to
work for it.
I made Jim go on a hike with me, ostensibly to enjoy the outdoors, but I wouldn't have minded if
we'd seen a bear. I said as much to Jim: "I hope we see a bear."
"I hope we don't see a bear," Jim replied.
Spoiler alert: We didn't see a bear. I was disappointed. Jim
was disappointed, too, but for different reasons – he hates camping.
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