There’s good ecological news in the continued resurgence of the North American black bear, even if that’s partly related to copious trash as an abundant food source. Good news, yet enough to give you pause should you see bear tracks near your campsite.
This happened to my son over Easter break, a second, shorter spring vacation of sorts courtesy of his Jesuit-run institution of higher learning. (And may this opportunity be taken to wish Pope Francis a peaceful rest.) He was somewhere near the Maryland-West Virginia border, edging close to the bendy Potomac River.
Saucer-eyed and bloodless of face, at least in my imagining, speechless, at least in his friends’ retelling, he recovered in a couple of hours, helping himself to a hot dog on a stick over flames, and then they did the right thing that night, keeping their edibles and their detritus away from where they slept.
The most experienced camper of the four college kids told only my son of the bear sign at first, seeking to avoid rattling the other two and thinking he might be a campsite veteran who would shrug it off. Well, he is now.
The story put me in mind of that motel room scene from “Dog Days,” one of the movies in the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, in which Greg Heffley bonds with his father over their confessed hatred of camping: “Yeah, I don’t understand what’s so great about sleeping in a bag, on the ground,” Steve Zahn as the dad says over a box of delivered pizza as they stretch out in front of the boob tube.
This was not that. But speaking of being unnerved, I remember in the mid-1990s taking one of those repurposed school buses into Denali National Park to go hiking and on the way in spying a grizzly minding its business off in the tundra. I never really bought that advice about adorning your backpack with jingly bells for a bit of warding-off noise, or dumbly singing out “Hey bear, hey bear!” as you trekked.
Turned out the only up-close-and-personal animal encounter came back at the exit road with an arctic ground squirrel looking for a handout.
I would later realize that I could take my nature in smaller doses, like a pocket park with a bench, or a northern flicker hammering at a brick of suet in my backyard. Which may be one reason why we never went on a family camping trip when the kids were young.
I’m not proud of that fact, but we did once make it, as Americans will, to Disney World.