{"id":4203,"date":"2021-05-02T06:48:26","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T10:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=4203"},"modified":"2021-05-02T06:48:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T10:48:35","slug":"a-bear-wants-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2021\/05\/02\/a-bear-wants-you\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bear Wants You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is another in the \u201cSunday Story\u201d series.  No politics or deep philosophical points to be made.  Just another story \u201cfrom the trail\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bear Bags<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So in a previous life, I spent a lot of time in the wilderness.  Some portion of each summer I was out on the trail backpacking.  I started at eleven as a Boy Scout, hiking Southeastern Ohio and Kentucky.  From there, it was a trip to the Scout reservation in Cimarron, New Mexico, two hundred square miles of mountains and wilderness called Philmont Scout Ranch.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to Philmont twice, once as a kid, and once as an adult leader.  We always saw a lot of wildlife out there, but bears were the big concern.  The black bears at Philmont were very used to the thousands of kids who marched the trails there each year.  They were so good at stealing the \u201ccrew\u201d food rations that it wasn\u2019t enough to just hang \u201cbear bags\u201d over tree limbs.  The bears had that strategy figured out \u2013 they\u2019d shimmy out the limb and slash the rope.  Then they\u2019d climb down and feast on three days food supply for twelve people.  Once they did that, the \u201ccrew\u201d had to divert from their \u201citinerary\u201d  to find more supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we made the equation more complex.  We\u2019d string a rope between two trees, then had the \u201cbear bag\u201d rope over that \u2013 suspending the bag high enough that the bear couldn\u2019t get it.  That seemed to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bear Rules<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We were warned \u2013 bears like things that smell good.  There were horror stories:  the kid who washed his hair with shampoo that a bear scalped, and the other poor Scout who decided to wear deodorant on the trail.  A bear came in his tent and ate his armpits.  Whether those stories were actually true or not really didn\u2019t matter \u2013 we were convinced.  No midnight snacks in the tent, no smelly soaps for \u201cpot baths\u201d.  If everyone smelled bad, no one noticed \u2013 we were united in stink.  But the theory was the bears wouldn\u2019t notice either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was thirteen that first time out in New Mexico, so I was ready for any story they told.  Looking back, I\u2019m not absolutely sure that a bear stuck his head in my tent the second night out on the trail.  It sounded like a bear, the grunts and the shuffle, and I heard the canvas tent flap open in the night (it was 1970, no fancy lightweight nylon tents for us).  I was convinced a bear was \u201cchecking us out\u201d, and concerned that my tentmate Mike might have snuck a Hersey\u2019s Tropical Chocolate into the tent.  (The \u201cTrop Choc\u201d was a Hersey bar made so hard that it didn\u2019t melt in a backpack, nor in the sun, nor in your mouth, honestly.  But it sure tasted good after dehydrated chili mac and hard tack crackers.  It, at least, was real).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Close Encounters<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But now I\u2019m not so sure there weren\u2019t Philmont Staff or other adults making sure that the \u201cyoung-ins\u201d were snug in their sacks.   And I can\u2019t say I actually saw the bear, just the inside of my sleeping bag, pulled over my face, waiting for the shred of bear claws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We emerged in the morning with a good story, and no injuries.  And bears, real or not, weren\u2019t our only contact with wildlife on our trip.  We also had an encounter with a less intimidating creature \u2013 porcupines.  Now we were all smart enough to avoid touching the animals (I told a porcupine tale in an earlier \u201cSunday Story,\u201d Hiking with Jack<\/a>).  But what we didn\u2019t know was that porcupines had a special taste for toilet paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AP Paper<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

 We were encamped in a staffed area that had \u201cKaibos\u201d, wooden outhouses.  That was a luxury:  most of the time we had to dig small holes and hang onto trees to do our business.  Now in the normal course of camping it\u2019s a \u201cnice\u201d thing to leave AP paper in the \u201cKaibo\u201d as a courtesy to the next user.  (That stands for All Purpose Paper \u2013 toilet paper was used as paper towels for cleaning dishes as well as its more normal use). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And at Philmont, the porcupines were more than happy to accept such courtesy.\u00a0\u00a0They would take the rolls of toilet paper and chew them into tiny white balls.\u00a0\u00a0Then they would\u00a0\u00a0scatter the balls throughout the camping area and woods.\u00a0\u00a0The next morning the \u201cStaff\u201d had a duty for us Scouts.\u00a0\u00a0For two hours we wandered the area, picking up little white balls like snow of carefully chewed AP Paper.\u00a0\u00a0Keeping Philmont clean was an important goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It Was This Big<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
On top of Mt. Baldy with Members of Troop 21 in the early 1980’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When I went back to Philmont years later as an adult, I was less concerned about the wildlife.  I\u2019d met a bear in Pennsylvania \u2013 we were hiking the same trail.  He was going South and I was going North, and when we met, we both turned and headed the other direction quickly.  So I assumed bears didn\u2019t want to meet us any more than we wanted to meet them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our crew had just climbed Mt. Baldy the day before, at 12,400 feet the highest peak in Philmont.  So we had an easy day planned, spending the morning hanging out at a staffed camp.  The kids all went down to pan gold in the nearby creek \u2013 and I had a few minutes of quiet at camp to relax.  We had a short hike scheduled for the afternoon, so the \u201cbear bag\u201d was down, ready to be apportioned out to the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The grunts and shuffling noises hadn\u2019t changed.  I looked up from our fire to see a small (maybe 400 pound) bear trying to work his way through the heavy duty plastic surrounding our food.  Now Philmont protocol was to bang pots and pans together to try to \u201cscare\u201d the bear away.  My suspicion is that nothing scares bears, but maybe the banging would annoy him enough to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I took a pan and our coffee pot, and banged them so hard that the pan was useless afterwards.  The bear, happy as a \u201cbear in a food pile\u201d, didn\u2019t seem particularly interested in my noise.  He was working on our lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glass Houses  <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It was a fourteen mile round trip to get re-supplied \u2013 and I wasn\u2019t looking forward to it.  So I committed the \u201ccardinal sin\u201d of how not to be on the good side of bears.  I picked up a rock, and chucked it at him.  Now today I couldn\u2019t hit a barn, but that shot was lucky, and I pegged the bear right on the nose.  He was not pleased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He dropped our lunch, and began to advance on me.  Now I knew I was in trouble \u2013 you can\u2019t outrun a bear, and you can\u2019t out climb them either.  But I started a quick retreat anyway.  Luckily, after a few steps the bear remembered he had a lunch already in paw,  so rather than making a dinner of me, he headed back to the pile.  He grabbed OUR lunch, and dragged it up into a tree nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after the kids came back and seemed skeptical of my bear story.  Even the dented pan didn\u2019t seem enough to convince them.  So we tore down our camp, and got ready for our afternoon transit.  But as the tents were coming down, I heard a yell.  The bear was back for a second course.  The kids were yelling and running, and I was doing a whole lot of \u201cI told you so\u201d.  The bear seemed confused by all of the action, and retreated back to his tree.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He posed for pictures there and several of the crew got one. I think there is still a bear portrait hanging in the Scout Cabin here in Pataskala.\u00a0\u00a0But picture or no, we all got a good bear story to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sunday Story Series<\/h3>\n\n\n\n