Three bears, a mama and her two cubs, close enough I could touch them. The scent of damp fur, a rank, earthy smell, hung in the air. I watched their nostrils flare and their chest rise and fall with each breath. The dull curve of their yellowed teeth stretched from their open mouths. Dirt caked their long, sharp, dangerous claws.
D. K. Wall:My friends and I stood on that trail, weighed down with backpacks, staring at three wild animals who could rip us to shreds without breaking a sweat.
D. K. Wall:But I'm getting ahead of myself. It was the summer before my senior year of college. My seasonal job had ended, and school didn't start for another two weeks. So a group of us piled into a van and drove cross country to New Mexico to hike the Sangre De Cristo Mountains.
D. K. Wall:The blood of Christ sounds ominous. Honestly, it's beautiful. Majestic peaks soar over 14,000 feet into the air. Hiking trails crisscross miles of wilderness dotted with rugged camping areas. We went deep into the backcountry, far from the crowds and modern niceties, and savored the glories of nature.
D. K. Wall:Such as bears. Lots and lots of bears. When we encountered others on the trail, we heard a growing legend of a mama bear and her two cubs terrorizing campers. They ripped into packs, raided campsites, and grew bolder with each successful heist. Be careful, the rangers warned.
D. K. Wall:And we were. Every night after dinner, we followed protocol, hung our food and everything with a scent on ropes strung between trees, dangling high in the air, suspended in the empty space between trunks. Bears can easily scale a tree, but they can't walk a tightrope.
D. K. Wall:Now, when I say everything went into those bear bags, I mean things you might not expect. Film, for example.
D. K. Wall:For my younger readers, once upon a time, cameras didn't have memory cards. They used actual film. Little rolls of plastic you loaded into the camera. You didn't know if a photo came out until the film was developed, sometimes weeks later. Which meant that on a trip like this, I carried rolls and rolls of film in my backpack.
D. K. Wall:And bears can smell film. Keeping it inside your tent is basically sliding an invitation under the door. Dear bear, please come inside and critique my photography. I'll be the one screaming in the sleeping bag.
D. K. Wall:No. Thank you. Film went into the bear bags as did toothpaste, soap, shaving cream, deodorant. Actually, we didn't even pack most of that stuff. Outside of creeks and rivers, we didn't have running water, so there wasn't much point in trying to stay clean.
D. K. Wall:This should come with a strong warning to anyone standing downwind of long term hikers coming off the trail. They are aromatic.
D. K. Wall:But the biggest no no, of course, was food of any kind. One of my fellow hikers had taken a liking to hot chocolate. Well, not hot chocolate exactly, the powder inside the sealed packet. Kevin skipped the whole add water part. On the trail, he'd lick a finger coated in cocoa powder for energy, he claimed.
D. K. Wall:One night, we woke to the sound of rustling. A young bear was shredding his pack to extract a packet of hot chocolate. An unopened packet of hot chocolate.
D. K. Wall:He had mistakenly left it in his pack, Thought about it after snuggling into his sleeping bag, but decided that it couldn't possibly be a real risk. No bear could smell powdered chocolate mix in a sealed pack buried in a backpack. Don't be silly, he laughed and went to sleep.
D. K. Wall:At 2AM, he was no longer laughing. Nor were we. Though, I admit there was a certain grim satisfaction in watching Kevin explain the hikers we encountered why a bear had shredded his pack for a beverage that wasn't even really a beverage.
D. K. Wall:Without his pack, we were forced to divide his supplies among ourselves. My pack gained four pounds. My sympathy for Kevin lost about the same.
D. K. Wall:So, yes, the episode made us that much more vigilant about keeping our food supplies dangling high in the air, well out of reach of curious noses and clever paws.
D. K. Wall:Only one night did we feel truly safe from bears. We happened upon a ranger station and asked him about the area's bear situation.
D. K. Wall:Quiet, he assured us. The mountain lion scared them away. He seemed genuinely excited about this, eagerly showed us a carcass the lion had been feeding on. Somehow, we weren't exactly comforted by the absence of bears that night.
D. K. Wall:But nor were we comforted by the growing alarm among hikers we encountered farther down the trail, nor other rangers we met. Nightly, a marauding mama bear and her pair of juvenile delinquents were executing daring raids on campers who made the slightest mistake with their food.
D. K. Wall:We all looked at Kevin, hot chocolate powder smearing his lips. He had the decency to look sheepish briefly, then he licked his finger.
D. K. Wall:Then came that morning, we rounded a corner on the trail and came to an abrupt halt. Directly in front of us were the three bears I opened this tale with. I neglected to mention that they were tranquilized and deeply asleep.
D. K. Wall:A pair of rangers were loading them into a trailer, a giant barrel like frame of metal bars designed to hold them securely. Mama bear, two cubs, the legendary campsite terrorists themselves.
D. K. Wall:The rangers had decided to relocate the family deeper into the mountains, well away from humans. The bears had grown too bold, too comfortable, too dangerous. And that's when I got my close-up view.
D. K. Wall:The flaring nostrils, the rising chest, the curved teeth, the dirt caked claws close enough to touch. Though the ranger strongly advised against it despite their being behind bars. Wouldn't be the first time we've seen a tranquilized bear wake up, one said. I took several steps back.
D. K. Wall:That night, while setting up camp, we laughed and joked about our encounter. We ate our dinner and relaxed. Really relaxed. For the first time all trip, we expected a bear and mountain lion free night of rest.
D. K. Wall:We still followed protocol. Everything in bear bags hung high in the air. Frisked Kevin for contraband cocoa. Twice. We weren't stupid.
D. K. Wall:But knowing that mama and her cubs were miles away bouncing along in the back of a ranger's trailer towards some distant corner of the wilderness, gave us the ability to sleep soundly.
D. K. Wall:Earlier that evening, we'd drawn straws for breakfast duty. The losers would bring down the bear bag at dawn and cook while the rest of us enjoyed one glorious, lazy morning of sleeping in.
D. K. Wall:I was not a loser. I would get some extra rest. And so, I awoke the next morning refreshed. Truly refreshed, after a full night's sleep for the first time in days.
D. K. Wall:The smell of sizzling food hung in the air. My mouth watered. I lay tucked in my sleeping bag, savoring the anticipation of the luxury of a hot breakfast. I didn't have to cook. Life was good.
D. K. Wall:And then, I heard a noise. I rolled over, slipped on my glasses, unzipped the tent flap, stuck my head out into the morning chill. Breakfast was indeed already being eaten, but not by humans.
D. K. Wall:Our unlucky chefs were standing far, far away, frozen, watching helplessly. And sitting in the middle of our campsite, perched on their rumps like they owned the place, were a mama bear and two cubs, enjoying a lovely breakfast.
D. K. Wall:Paws worked through our supplies with surprising dexterity. The cubs squabbled over the good bits. Mama licked the frying pan. All while I lay in a tent not 10 feet away, quietly scoping potential escape routes.
D. K. Wall:Here's the thing about the wilderness. Just because the rangers had caught a mama bear and her two cubs, didn't mean they had caught every mama bear and her two thieving cubs.
D. K. Wall:Terrorizing campers in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains wasn't a unique ursine career path. It was a bruin tradition.
D. K. Wall:What could we do? We tried shooing them, yelling, banging pots together from a safe distance, of course.
D. K. Wall:The mama bear looked up once, chuffed, went back to licking the last specks of grease from the pan clutched in her paws. Her kids frolic around their campsite racing in and out of empty tents.
D. K. Wall:We debated sprinkling hot chocolate powder on Kevin and sending him running down the trail as a decoy. He refused. We pointed out that we've been carrying his supplies for days and that he owed us. He remained unmoved. Literally, he wouldn't budge from behind a tree.
D. K. Wall:Only when the bear family was satisfied, when they had consumed every last morsel of our breakfast, did they finally waddle away into the trees, full, content, completely unbothered.
D. K. Wall:We stood in the wreckage of our campsite surrounded by shredded packaging and empty containers. Our stomachs growled, but our meal was gone. There was nothing left to do, so we packed up and hiked hungry.
D. K. Wall:Fortunately, we had Kevin's supplies in our backpacks. We divvied up the last packets of hot chocolate despite his protest.
D. K. Wall:Honestly, hot chocolate eaten straight from the packet off a dirty finger on an empty stomach isn't half bad.