A Knack for Embarrassment

Acknowledgments

First, I have to thank National Novel Writing Month—NaNoWriMo—for forcing me to get these stories down on paper. Had I not participated, I doubt these stories would’ve seen the light of day. Oh, they’ll be retold here and there, but, unless you happen to be with me when I’m in the mood for telling them, they’ll remain tucked away somewhere in my memory.

There are a lot of people who have taken part in my adventures (and misadventures) over the years and I have to thank them for making the experiences memorable. To Jenna Beers, Joseph Beers, Dan Beers, Cheryl Beers, Mindy Boodry, Adam Beers, Kerry Porter, Kimberley Preh, Devin Green, Jayden Green, Kourtney Green, Nathan Green, Jami Gaver, Matthew Gaver, Julian Pineda, Ryan Peine, Glen Nickerson, Kevin Van Stone, Dylan Longstreet, Justin Mooney, Edie Goodrich, Melissa Brown, John Thorpe, Ben Thorpe, Julie Thorpe, and Bud Winslow—a great big thanks!

Many thanks go out to Anna Allen with Eschler Editing and Callie Stoker from The Manuscript Doctor for finding my mistakes and helping me polish up the final draft. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thanks to Michael Gambriel for his fantastic artwork on the cover. Mike, you captured the moment quite well. Every time I see the cover I remember the incident and laugh heartily.

Thank you to my readers, who encouraged me with their comments on Sleddin’ Road. I’m glad you liked it and hope you enjoy these.

Finally, my biggest thanks go to my wife, Jenna, and my son, Joseph, who’ve endured long lengths of life without me as I locked myself in my office trying to write this all down. All my gratitude, you two are the best!

Bears in the Woods with People

Anyone who says they don’t think about bears when they head to the woods is lying. It’s a known fact that bears live in the woods and that they eat meat, a substance of which humans are made. To not think about bears when you’re in the woods is like offering yourself as a human meat sandwich to any bruins that come by. And they will come by. Even premeditatedly thinking about bears when you’re in the woods may not save you from a black bear encounter or from becoming grizzly fodder.

It’s a gruesome topic, I know, but all serious outdoorspeople must make Premeditated Bear Situation Thinking, or PBST, part of their study and preparation before entering the woods. It’s the only way to increase your chances of avoiding a thorough bear chewing.

I happen to be a PBST expert with an extensive resume, but I wasn’t always at the top of the field. After all, one must see, smell, and know bears before he or she can become a PBST expert.

You’ve got to get a firsthand sense of bears. Television, movies, and books just don’t do bears any justice, except perhaps the 1976 B-movie, Grizzly, where the park ranger eventually destroys the murderous antagonist—a grizzly nearly the size of Kong—with a bazooka. That one is pretty close to gospel truth.

Once in a while you’ll come across a real park ranger that can give you a reliable picture of bear behavior. Be careful though, you’ll have to vet the ranger’s advice with precision. I once sat in on a park ranger’s campfire chat about bear safety and was so disgusted by his reliance on conventional wisdom that I darn near stood up and called him an apostate bear expert. Had it not been for my wife holding me down, I would have publicly shamed him.

He presented his so-called safety tips in list format and then discussed them at length with all the park visitors in attendance.

Now for those of you visiting bear country for the first time, here is a list of dos and don’ts around bears, the ranger opened.

Number One. Never panic if you come across a bear.

Whatever! When I come across a bear, panicking is the only way I know I’m still alive and capable of escape.

Number Two. Make lots of noise in bear country. Our park store sells bear bells you can hang on your walking sticks or backpacks to help make noise.

Bear bells? Now there’s a great way for letting a bear know where its dinner is located. While some noise may be a suitable bear deterrent, it has to be the right kind of noise, something that will scare the carnivore right out of bears and let them know you’re onto them. Screaming like a horror movie victim and repeatedly saying What was that?, Did you hear that?, and Sounded like a bear can be effective.

Number Three. Never run from a bear, it’ll think you’re prey. Slowly back away from the bear while you continually talk calmly to it.

Okay, there might be some wisdom in this—if you’re alone. If you’re with someone else, make sure you can run away faster than the other guy. As far as talking to the bear? I’m usually too busy screaming to get out any coherent words. If the screaming is as unpleasant as my wife says it is, then the bear should have no problem taking the hint to skedaddle. You should be just fine with my method.

Number Four. When camped, place all smellables in your locked vehicle, in an elevated bear bag, or in a bear box or other bear proof container. Smellables attract bears and include food, drink mixes, chapstick, toothpaste, soap, deodorant, perfume, cologne, and anything that puts off an odor.

What about putting me in that bear bag, Mr. Park Ranger? I put off an odor. What if the bear who finds me doesn’t like all that extra seasoning with his meat?

And finally, Number Five. Bear attacks are rare but if a grizzly bear attacks, play dead, keep your belly to the ground, and cover your face and head. If a black bear attacks, fight back, as it likely sees you as food.

Please. First off, not only do you have to concentrate on not panicking and speaking calmly, now you also have to quickly determine the bear’s make and model and then decide whether or not to play dead. What happens if you play dead when attacked by a black bear? Or if you fight an attacking grizzly? I’m guessing death, either way. I say your best bet is to stuff your bear bells down the bear’s throat and hope it chokes on ‘em. When in grizzly country be sure to carry bigger bells.

When the park ranger finished his lecture, and during the ensuing thunderous applause from his audience, I figuratively kissed the scene goodbye, hoping everyone would survive their next bear situation, and escaped back to camp. I went straight to the glove compartment in the minivan and pulled out a notebook and some paper so I could write the park administration about the false doctrine preached during their bear safety sermons. I’ve included some of what I wrote in this scholarly article.

Now, since I’ve acknowledged some of the existing falsehoods about bear situations, let me explore PBST and building your bear situation experience. The only way I can adequately do this is by relating some of the vital lessons I’ve learned in all their finer details. Have a pad of paper and pencil ready to take down some notes. You won’t want to forget this.

AS I SAID, YOU’LL NEED a firsthand sense of bears. If you want to become a PBST expert, you’re gonna have to journey to the woods and have bear situations. You should also consider some training from a PBST expert (partial credit in PBST can be obtained by reading this scientific paper). Additionally, although I’ve noted that television, movies, and books (and some park rangers) are suspect in their depiction of bears and lacking true wisdom and experience to back up their bear advice, there is some information from such sources that can be helpful. To save you the time of wading through all that apocryphal material, I’ve done the parsing for you. It boils down to one single piece of advice I picked up in a bear situation book my uncle bought me years ago at the Juneau airport. The book pulls no punches and spares no details, as is depicted in its apt title, Bear Encounters That Didn’t End Well.

The advice is simple and succinct: the only thing predictable about bears is that they’re unpredictable. Once you figure that out, you’ll be ready for anything, as unpredictable as it might be. Don’t bother looking for Bear Situation instruction anywhere else in the gamut of consumable media. You won’t find anything out there that’ll trump this advice (except this scholarly and scientific article).

Training from a PBST Expert

Since we’ve covered the worthwhile advice from media sources, let’s examine training from a PBST expert. These experts are rare; I’ve come across two in my lifetime, yours truly and Jack the Viking.

Jack was thirteen and I was twelve when I first met him in 1988. That winter, his family, a Norwegian clan of five—Jack, his younger brother Pete, his younger sister Lulie, and his mom and dad, Aud and Jack Sr. Myklebust—moved into the far house at the Northern Idaho fish hatchery where I grew up. Jack shared my love of The Woods (a term we used to denote all things nature) and we immediately began adventuring (and misadventuring) together.

Both of us were good with a pocket knife, we were both master-level tent-pitchers, and our tracking skills were neck-and-neck. You could almost say that we were equally-gifted outdoorsmen. But Jack had a skill in his outdoorsman skillset that, at the time, all but completely escaped me. He never revealed it when we were hiking about, making a bunch of noise but brought it out when we were camping, exclusively at night, when we were trying to get some shuteye.

On each campout, once nightfall hit, Jack’s senses morphed into military-grade radar. If a bear was within ten miles of us, Jack would hear it, or smell it, or pick up the heat fluctuation if its warm-blooded body entered our airspace. It was nice to have such a safety net, however, it was impossible to sleep with Jack saying, What was that? Did you hear that? all night long.

It could well be said that Jack developed this skill so deeply as to be obnoxious. This was never so apparent than the one time we camped on the coldest night ever recorded in September in Northern Idaho.

On that particular frozen September campout, we found ourselves, as usual, setting up camp late, the sun was already behind Howe Mountain and the sky’s blue was turning gray as night crept in.

Jack, I dropped my bedroll next to our old fire ring, let’s cut down some ferns and make us some mats to sleep on.

Jack was starting to get a bit skittish, a surefire sign that his PBST was charging up for the evening. He twitched and fidgeted as PBST took control over his senses, causing him to keep checking over his shoulder with each step and jumping at the flutter of leaves stirred by every puff of tiny wind.

S...s...sure, he replied, reaching into his pocket and fumbling with his pocket knife. Although Jack took to cutting the ferns for his mat, he spent a good deal of time popping up and down in the nearby fern patch like a prairie dog. Each time his head popped above the ferns he’d ask, Did you hear that? Before I could answer he’d be back to cutting. The behavior was enough to perturb a seasoned psychologist.

Within fifteen minutes we had ourselves a couple of fat bracken fern mats, stacked next to each other a few yards from our fire ring.

Hey, I said to Jack. Looks like I might actually get some sleep on this fern bed. Seems cushy enough.

Jack wasn’t listening. He was too busy snapping out his bedroll and rummaging through his gear for matches to light a fire. Soon he had a flame so high astronauts could see it from space. More importantly, it was bright enough we could see for a mile in all directions.

There, Jack said, his fidgeting down to a minimum. Ain’t no bears that’ll sneak up on us now. What do you say we cook us up some hotdogs?

What? I yelled from fifty yards back at the edge of an alder stand. I can’t hear you very well through the roar of your bonfire. Just back here slathering on some sunscreen to try and minimize the proximity burn.

As Jack’s firewood supply dwindled I moved closer and eventually cooked a hotdog. By then we were well into the night and Jack’s radar senses ratcheted up again.

Well, I think I’ll hit the hay...er, ferns. I stepped away from the fire, walking toward my fern bed and chuckling at my joke. You gonna...? I stopped and swung back to ask Jack if he were also calling it quits for the night when I heard a whoosh and a slight wind blew by me as I was turning toward the fire where Jack had been. He wasn’t there. I heard him rustling over his fern bed and snapping his wool blanket over the top of him.

Guess you’re already there, I said, walking to my own fern bed.

Yep, yep. Goin’ to bed, Jack said, his words came out of his mouth so fast they were almost indistinguishable. When I passed by him, he was laying on his back, his hands cupped behind his ears, and his eyes bugging out of his head in the classic sleeping position for a night of PBST.

Before I could even lay down in my bedroll Jack spurted, Whawastha—? Didyaheartha—?

"It was just me trying