My Encounter with a Grizzly Bear
Grizzly bears were not always as scary as they are today.
I know because in 1962 one lumbered through a Yellowstone campground and ambled right across my sleeping bag – and I am here to tell about it.
Now admittedly I was not in the bag at the time, but if it had been left up to me, I would have been fast asleep in his path.
So, here is the story:
In 1962 having just completed my junior year in college I climbed aboard my Lambretta motor scooter, purchased in Italy three years before, and left Cambridge, Massachusetts, for an 8000-mile summer road trip to Monterey, California. I would make the journey at a top speed of 35 miles per hour, and during eight straight weeks I slept out without a tent with only a ground sheet to keep off the rain and enjoyed the moon and stars for décor.
Aboard “Gnawbone” in West Virginia, 1962
I scooted across the Northeast and the Midwest, fetching the real West in New Mexico, then swung north to Glacier, through Spokane and Seattle, and down the Pacific Coast. Sometimes I slept in campgrounds; often I simply pulled off the road into the forest or a field. Usually I gathered a little wood for a cook fire and as a cure for the evening chill. Nightfall would find me fast asleep.
(My fires were always better than average: no smudge, no inferno.)
I was always in strange, new places, and I always felt a slight touch of fear, directed at nothing in particular. One night in Missouri two german shepherds came wagging out of the darkness and licked my face as I tried to sleep, departing and returning all night long to bestow upon me their bouncy affection..
But no wolves.
And no bears….for a while.
Back in those days, the bears were not so threatening as they are today.
Going back in time still further….
When I was about 14, I went on a back packing trip with a dozen other boys and our counselors up into Sequoia National Park. At our base, a bear or two often wandered into the camp at night without harming anything except our chocolate supplies. We were so unafraid that when I requested permission to set up some big cans with chocolate on top and sleep nearby, no one objected.
I had a good plan. A bear would wander into the campground, head for the chocolate, knock over the cans, and thus wake me up. Then I would leap to my feet with my Brownie camera and snap a flash picture.
In your face, Bill Bryson!
But the darn bear chose that night not to appear, postponing my campground bear encounter for another six or eight years.
Back to 1962….
So, back on the road on my scooter. (Its name, by the way, was “Gnawbone” after a little village near Bloomington, Indiana, where I grew up. The other possible name from another nearby village was “Stony Lonesome,” but I dismissed that as too melodramatic.)
Somewhere along the way to Yellowstone I met a park ranger who talked with me about bears. Don’t bother them, he said, and they won’t bother you. The only case he knew of anyone being hurt by a bear without provocation, was an unfortunate fellow who pitched his tent under a bear-friendly tree. In the night a clumsy bear climbed the tree, slipped, and fell right on the camper.
(You see, Patrick McManus does not need to invent this stuff!)
So I was pretty much bear-fear immune by the time I reached Yellowstone. In the campground I heard that there was a bear who sometimes came visiting. But what the heck, thought I, let him come!
I cooked and ate and washed my face (yes) and got into my pajamas (yes), did a little reading, wrote in my journal, said good night to the stars, and fell into a deep sleep.
Until….
Untll a car pulled up beside my campsite, and someone shouted to me, “Hey, mister there’s a grizzly in the campground, and he’s coming your way.”
“Whatever,” I said, or words to that effect.
“Hey, mister,” they shouted, “you better get in our car.”
Oh, well, thought I. If I don’t oblige them, they will just stay there and shout at me.
I had hardly gotten in the car, when the sound of a lumbering freight train came to my ears; the trees began to shake as if caught in a tornado, the ground shook so that the car bounced.
And then things got scary.
OK, as you can see, I’m channeling here our friend Patrick McManus!
But in all actuality, a very formidable grizzly bear ambled into my campsite, checked out my bag, checked out Gnawbone, and then strolled to the next site.
He probably thought something like, “Poor college student. Nothing here.”
I can’t recall all the details: the friendly folk in the car probably invited me to spend the night with them, but I had exercised enough caution for one evening. So I thanked them and returned to my still toasty bag.
Was I worried about the bear returning for a tasty bite of sleeping bag sandwich?
Heck no.
This was 1962, remember.
Would I stay out on the ground under similar circumstances today?
Hell, no!
Do you think I’m crazy?!