Wednesday, February 7, 2018

I Want to Have a Bear Complaint


Image by Malene Thyssen from Wikimedia Commons
A friend of mine recently moved to Alaska, and I am jealous. I would love to move to Alaska. It would be cold, dark, miserable, snowy, and full of embittered, unmarriageable alcoholics – just the way I like it.

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.

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.