Sunday, June 24, 2007

The Snap of a Twig

I'm back. I'm alive. Over 30 miles, 9 days and 11 different sites surveyed. It was difficult and fantastic. I saw some incredibly beautiful things that (most likely) few others have. That's what you get when you go off trail. You also get some pretty nasty cuts/bruises on your shins. Pictures will be posted Tuesday or Wednesday.

I'll relate my most harrowing experience, and then properly document the whole trip in a few days. Listen up, Jamie and Q! I have stared down a predator .....

It was somewhere around 6 a.m. at Empire Meadows SE, a site that I did my first time out also (oh - I was wrong - I did not go to Hetch Hetchy, but returned to the Wawona/Chilnualna Falls area of the park). I was busily looking up trying to find one of the woodpeckers that was doing some loud drumming. I thought it might be a Pileated Woodpecker, so was very interested in seeing it. It is our largest woodpecker. I moved to my next point, looking up (birds) and down (water), then settled in to take a GPS. As I was waiting for the satellites to pinpoint my location, I heard the snap of wood behind me. Now, I have heard this hundreds of times and turned around to find .... nothing. This time I turned around to find a furry brown creature with a lighter latte-colored nose looking at me. He was about 30-40 meters away. He stared at me. I stared at him. I thought perhaps it would be best to address the situation, so I said (calmly I like to imagine), "Go away, Bear." This did not have the desired effect. Mind you, I have seen a handful of bears in the last 2 summers, and they have always been 1) at least hundreds of meters away and 2) seemingly very intimidated by me. This one was neither of those. So, I tried again. "GO AWAY, BEAR." This produced a slight half-step forward. Not the intended result. I had the presence of mind to reach in my pocket for my camera. I continued my monologue by saying things like "I'M BIGGER THAN YOU." "I CAN KICK YOUR ASS." Etc., Etc. All blatant lies. I took a picture. Shit! The flash was on and he was hard to see, so I was trying to zoom in more and turn off the flash, but I realized this was fruitless as my hand was shaking way too much to hold the camera steady, and I did not want take my eyes off the bear for too long just so you all could see a picture of him. That would be a bit foolish. He ran a little away and then stopped, so I just kept at it: "GO AWAY, BEAR. I'M BIGGER THAN YOU." There was another half step forward, then he fled into the woods. I was downright amazed at how much my hand was shaking. It only lasted a minute or so.
I realized after he left that he was not that huge. When I showed people the picture later, they surmised that perhaps s/he was a 2-3 year old. Maybe this explains the curiosity? I also saw a bear with my partner across a meadow later in the week, and this thing looked the size of a bison even from hundreds of meters away, which convinced me that I had an encounter with a little guy. Still, scared the shit out of me!

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