Bearly Afraid

The first thing that you should know about black bears is that they are inherently shy, unassuming animals that will generally try to give you as much space as you allow them.

The second thing that you should know about black bears is that there are always exceptions.

My home state of Minnesota is lucky enough to boast one of the largest black bear populations in the United States, especially within the northern half of the state. When I’m backpacking, it’s important to remain aware of this – but it’s easy to underestimate an animal so rarely seen, especially when one has experience with their larger Western cousins.

It was August and I was backpacking along a northern section of Minnesota’s Superior Hiking Trail. Like other trails in the U.S., camping is free but confined to designated sites. This means that you will sometimes have to share sites with other backpackers; it also means that bears have the chance to get habituated to the same location every night, where there is likely to be food.

When I got to my planned site for the night, a YMCA-esque group of young girls had beat me there and already set up. It was clear that they had no plans to hang their food, and it was with some foreboding that I set up my tent a few dozen yards back from them in the forest.

I’ll pause here to freely admit that I also made two mistakes this night. First, I hung my food too close to my tent; secondly, I missed a Clif bar that was hidden in the depths of my pack (which I put in my tent for the night).

It was not until around 10:00 that night that I realized my mistakes.

I wish I could tell you that I wasn’t sure why I woke up; that it was an inexplicable sixth sense preserved from our primal ancestors that fed and fled by the sounds in the night. The reality is more mundane: the sound of breaking branches from where I had hung my food, a mere twenty feet from where I was sleeping.

Of all of us that have sat around fires, lay in tents, listened out of windows to the sounds in the night – very few of our fears have been realized. Rarely have we seen the agent of those noises we hear, and when we do, it’s almost always just a raccoon.

It wasn’t until I heard the guttural panting outside my tent and the hair rose up on the back of my neck that I was able to convince myself it was a bear outside.

Even then I did nothing. My inaction was no longer from denial – now it stemmed from a far simpler and older human function: fear.

Tonight, turn off the lights in your room and sit in the darkness. Imagine that you are alone in a tent in the woods. Imagine that you can hear the heavy breathing and the harsh snorts and the sound of heavy paws dragging over the ground. Imagine that you can smell it, rank and musty. Imagine that your extensive biological education – your intellectual knowledge that black bears are shy and normally don’t attack humans – disappeared along with the daylight when the sun went down and the woods got dark.

You’ve just imagined fear.

That’s why I lay frozen on the ground in my tent, full of the knowledge that I needed to act, and full of the kind of incapacitation that can only be felt and never fully described. It wasn’t until I felt my tent move and saw the wall indent from the weight of its body that I could move myself.

A few things to help you imagine the scene – first, I’m functionally blind with an eye prescription of minus six, which pretty much means that I’m done for the day after my contacts come out. Secondly, I’m naked as a resort against the sticky warmth of August. Needless to say, I didn’t stop to put in contacts or to clothe myself in the face of the bear’s attempted entrance.

Screaming obscenities and death threats, I burst out of my tent only to see the bear standing several feet away. At this point, I’m fully committed without anywhere to hide or run to. There was a span of several seconds when the bear just looked at me – a screaming, almost-blind, stick-waving naked man. I looked just crazy enough to where the bear decided to have nothing to do with me and took off into the forest. In the morning, the YMCA girls would discover to their chagrin that they too had been visited by the bear, to the tune of powdered sugar and trail mix.

Most of us relish our opportunities and experiences with wildlife when we’re out on the trail. I’ve told this story and had it received with envy. It seems as if many of my friends think it would be great fun to chase a bear out of a campsite. The reality is that it’s not just a question of scary vs. exciting – in fact, it’s not a question at all: it’s dangerous. If I wasn’t a light sleeper, I would have woken to a bear inside my tent with me.

So hang your food, and sleep lightly in bear country.