It’s All Fun and Games Until a Grizzly Bear Eats Your Head
Posted by Moose on July 1st, 2008. Filed under: Adventures.I’ve been hankering to go camping. Which is somewhat odd, as I’m not much of a camper. I don’t make a habit of tromping into the wilderness at the first sign of thaw, headlamp strapped to my forehead and little orange poop shovel at the ready. But I am rereading A Walk in the Woods – does that count? (No, you say? Reading about backpacking through the Appalachian Trail while sitting at my kitchen table eating a roast chicken sandwich with arugula and aioli doesn’t count? Well, fine.)
We went camping when I was a kid, but we did the kind of camping where locking your keys in the car would result in panic because no one could get to the pancake mix or marshmallows. (Yes, this happened. I’m not sure if it was the same trip when we drove to Big Sur, couldn’t find our friends, called them and discovered to much hysterical laughter that we were supposed to be in Big Basin, a forest three hours away. But I do know that it takes Triple A a very long time to send a truck into the wilderness to jimmy open a car door.) It wasn’t the kind of camping that involves weighing everything you bring on a little scale because you’ll be carrying it all on your back, and apparently those six packs of beer are too heavy.
Maybe I’m yearning for the outdoors, or maybe I just really need a vacation and camping seems more viable than a Hawaiian island. But this keen desire of mine comes with a small problem: I don’t know anything about camping. I get lost on my way to the grocery store. Which means modern technology can’t yet calculate what I’d manage to do on a backwoods trail leading to an even more remote backwoods spot, a spot that might be home to large, hulking bears who sharpen their talons menacingly on alpine firs.
Which brings us back to Bill Bryson and his book – I’m currently at the part where he discusses bears and how dabbing on a bit of hair gel or carrying a Snickers bar in your pocket for later can result in having a limb gnawed off. I haven’t worn hair gel since the seventh grade, but I did eat my last Snickers bar only minutes ago. I’m sure bears can sniff such things out. Even if you don’t have chocolate on your person, they can probably deduce how much you like chocolate and they’d better eat you just in case. At any rate, I’m rather fond of my limbs and not entirely sure how to keep them attached, should a grizzly wander within range. Sure, people backpack all the time without being eaten by bears, so I can probably stifle most of my hysteria on that score. But I’m fairly sure that at some point during the proceedings, I will have to read a map.
Maps scare me. I started driving just before mapquest and google made the freeways safe for those such as me, and most of my first few driving years were spent wondering how I ended up in Nevada. Bless the internet and its keen ability to take two designated addresses and spit out specific written instructions. Not that mapquest is any kind of guarantee, you understand. Just a few months ago, I was trying to track down a new place to get the oil changed on my car. I trundled out at 6:30 in the blessed a.m. to get it done before I was due at work, grabbed my internet map, and started the engine. Fifteen minutes later, I found myself parked in an unfamiliar neighborhood, in front of an unfamiliar house. As I inspected this patently residential establishment for a Jiffy Lube sign, it dawned on me that perhaps I was in the wrong place. I was. Turns out 19th Avenue is very different from 19th Street.
If I can get myself so thoroughly confused in an urban area, with street signs and a cell phone at my disposal, how would I fare out in the woods? “Rather poorly” is the only honest answer I can give to that question. Somewhere, a bear just licked his chops in anticipation of my tasty left leg.
Suffice it to say, I find myself intimidated by the whole backpacking process. (We haven’t even gotten to the equipment quandary and what to put in that towering backpack. How many novels is too many? Six? Seven? What about that bottle of pinot noir?) But I don’t want to avoid something simply because it’s scary. Or because my last earthly sight might be the gaping maw of an oversize bear.
So I guess I have to go backpacking. Anyone have a map?
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July 1st, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Camping would be wonderful if the whole frigging state was not on fire. But you need to find someone to do the prep and you bring the beer. That is how I camp. Make someone else pitch the tent, I will supply the booze.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Here’s my piece of backpacking advice: you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the slowest person running from the bear.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:39 pm
As a kid, I read a story about people eating bear meat (I can’t remember what book it was), and they concluded that the bear must have eaten a lot of ripe berries since the meat was so sweet tasting.
I suppose that eating Snickers-sweetened human flesh would be karmic payback for our woodland friends.
Poetic justice or Circle of Life? Either way, camping out in someone’s backyard seems a lot safer – and more convenient!
July 1st, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Whatever you do, don’t leave a trail of crumbs to help you find your way back home. Birds eat crumbs. AND SO DO BEARS!
July 1st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Oh I’d love to go camping for the 4th of July weekend. But alas I don’t have enough time. And I don’t want to pay for gas to get somewhere either.
The hubby and I used to go camping quite a bit when we were first married. I enjoyed it a lot but we haven’t gone since those early days (damn those bills and responsibilities).
July 1st, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Hello! I’m a new fan of your blog. I SO enjoy your writing.
Funny that you wrote this…I went backpacking over the weekend. But it was just for a night. It helps a lot to have someone who knows a lot about camping and such (as I did). I must say, though, that sleeping in a cocoon-like state will take some practice. I didn’t sleep well at all because I couldn’t freely move about and wouldn’t dare expose anything but the smallest bit of my face because it was freakin’ cold!
But I still think you should do it. My trip was the best break from life that I’ve had in a while.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I got lost going to work. It was three blocks from my house. Sigh.
And?
I camp now because my husband and inlaw’s are the type that can go into the wilderness with a Swiss army knife and a paperclip and build a mall.
I grew up in a family that had ONE sleeping bag. It was orange, 20+ years old and had no zipper so we kept it in a trash bag.
It was a big conversation starter and girls camp, let me tell you.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I love not camping. That being said, I would highly recommend getting a GPS. Mine has a British accent and goes by the name JANE. She gets a little pissy if you miss a suggested turn, but after her snit passes, she gives an alternative route. Instead of “You have reached your destination” I wish she would say “Well DONE!” or “Tea Time!”
July 1st, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Wanna go camping with us in August?
What if I sweetened the pot by supplying a ride, a raft and the Tuolomne River?
I am serious. We’re looking at the first two weekends!
July 1st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Forget camping. Go to Mexico. I will join you!
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:40 am
camping? what is this camping of which you speak??
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:18 am
How thoughtful of you not to attribute those two little-bitty camping mistakes to me. And we wound up in Big Basin instead of Big Sur, where our friends were meeting us. (You got it backwards, but it was still three hours to get to where we were supposed to be, after having driven 1 1/2 hours to get to Big Basin.) I locked the car keys in the car when we were at Pinecrest, camping with the same friends who had laughed hysterically at my previous blunder. So, you rightfully get your camping ineptness (is that a word?) from me, along with dripping food down the front of you, which I did again yesterday when out to lunch (at a fancy place) with friends.
As for bears: I ate THEIR meat twice back in my meat-eating days. The semester I student-taught in central Wisconsin, we were invited to the Stockbridge Indian reservation a couple of times for dinner. The first time we ate spaghetti with bear sauce, and the second time bear roast–very much like beef except gamier tasting. In those days humans caught bears instead of the other way around.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
They do make gps in wristwatch form these days…I’d pick it over the map any day. Backpacking does seem intimidating! I’ve been picking the car camping option lately. Easier to pack. Scale not required. Similar ambiance (if appropriate campground is picked). Showers likely.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I must say that I virtually never, ever get the impulse to go camping. Recently I heard of this place, Costanoa, in California, where you can pretend to camp–only you stay in a fancy little tent bungalow. Ahhhh. That’s more like it.
http://www.costanoa.com/site.php
I like nature–just not its discomforts.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
A friend of mine went camping last summer and a bear ate her birth control. I was lukewarm about camping before I heard that story, but now? No way. (Although you have to admit, it’s a great story. Maybe especially if she’d gotten pregnant as a direct result of the birth-control-eating bear.)
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I love camping – with cabins. And running water. Plus a stove.
Well, I definitely love vacations. And living vicariously. So, let us know how the whole not getting eaten by a bear while lost in a land of identical looking trees goes. Wait, does the outdoors have wifi? Do you have to give up chocolate AND the internet to go camping? That is hardcore.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Oooh, I think I’m going camping soon! I must get my once-a-year fix in. Seriously: that’s how often I’m tempted. It’s like I have to get it out of my system or something. Also: I insist upon an air mattress.
ALSO also, I kind of love your mum. I hope that’s not weird. Maybe it is.
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 am
I wish I were going to be here longer so we could go camping!!
July 3rd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I love backpacking and I *love* that Bryson book (well, all of Bryson, really). I just planned a backpacking trip in Pt. Reyes for the end of the month, and can’t wait. Have you ever gone out there? No bears, and the trails are pretty easy to follow …
July 7th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Moose’s Maw is indeed, the greatest.
I say we plan a girl camping trip. I can pick a spot without too strenuous a hike but with great views, a little bear-y danger (so delicious) and some good swims! When do you want to go?