This is from last April....
"Bears!"
Well, it is now time to address one of my favorite obsessions since moving to Appalachia and that is the one and only.... American Black Bear!
Yes, I am very intrigued with the possibility of coming into contact with a bear during one of my hiking excursions into the wild remote regions of the mountains here in the east. There aren't any bears around the hollow that I have heard of but I remember that I saw on the news the first summer I lived here that a bear was tranquilized and hauled off in a town about 45 minutes up the road. I got a kick out of that. Hailing from the heavily populated plains of Plano, Texas, bears were never really on the radar for me. The only bear I have seen in the wild was one running across the road in front of our car far up in the high country of New Mexico.
So, I am filled with a mixture of nagging anxiety and at the same time, cautious excitement when I go to a trailhead that I am aware is in bear county. They usually have signs to warn you when you enter known bear habitats. There's something in the element of danger that makes a hike more exhilarating to me. Nevermind all the more likely possibilities such as getting injured, getting too thirsty or hungry to get back, or getting caught in a mountain thunderstorm and reeling from the staggering confusion and sufferings of hypothermia. Throw in wild inbred hillbillies taking a shine to me and poisonous snakes lurking in the brush where I stop to pee and I find I have to get in a certain frame of clearheadedness when I strike out, especially on longer, more remote hikes.
The rules for handling a bear encounter are as follows:
1. NEVER run from a bear! That will simply get it to imagine YOU are a double cheeseburger on legs and it will devour you in short order. There are days where I feel like a double cheeseburger but not in THAT way.
2. Throw rocks at the bear if it is acting aggressive and wont go away at your frantic hollerings of "Nice bear! Go home! Git! I'm not dinner!" I am skeptical of this as it seems it would simply annoy the bear and it would just disembowel you to make you quit hitting it on it's bear head with rocks!
3, If everything else fails they tell you to fight the bear with everything you have. Now, THAT would be a surreal moment! Me all huffing and puffing, wrassling with a bear and me trying to gets it's big bear paw behind its back to pin it down while I trash talk it. Hee hee... Not likely. I think the very last thing I might ever see here on earth is a big ole grouchy bear's claw coming at my head as I wonder "why in the hell did I pick TODAY to wear this delicious and aromatic porkchop around my neck? Geeeeze!"
Oh mercy. Well, we did have a bear attack in Tennessee about 3 hours from here last week and a tragically fatal one at that, so I need to take bears seriously and keep my sharp wits about me when I'm in their habitat.
I WILL try to get a photograph of a bear sometime before I beat a hasty (but not running) retreat!
