Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (23 page)

The black bear was originally considered such a great threat to humans that, according to Charles Konopa, “Some Indians classified the bear with man on the hierarchical list; a few tribes thought it was superior.” Konopa adds, “It was a ferocious brute. Unprovoked sorties against Indians and European settlers were common.”

“I was wrathy to kill a bear,” wrote Davy Crocket. He and other testosterone-laden woodsmen indiscriminately killed bears on the Appalachian frontier in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Indeed, those legendary folk “heroes” were successful in virtually exterminating the black bear in parts of the American East.

Black bears survived by adapting to human behavior. After the advent of gunpowder and mechanized weapons, black bears greatly reduced their “unprovoked sorties” against humans. Instead, they became more cagy and calculating. It is now common for people to venture out into the woods unarmed without overwhelming concern about bears.

But there remain problems. Some, of course, can be chalked up to that old bugaboo—human stupidity. In one notorious case some loving parents poured honey on their young daughter’s finger to feed to a bear. The bear liked it so much it helped itself to half of the girl’s hand, too.

But another common source of bear-human problems is unavoidable and ultimately more problematic. Stories are legion of hikers ambling along only to see some rambunctious cubs darting around or climbing a tree. Moments later the mother arrives and finds a human with the inside position. There is no simple approach to defusing these potentially very dangerous situations. Ursine protocol calls for the hiker to back up and avoid eye contact with the bear. If the bear moves in your direction you are supposed to throw a stick in its direction. If this doesn’t work you try to nail the bear with a rock, preferably in its very sensitive nose. After that, most guidebooks usually trail off with vague language that the hiker should then consider himself in quite a bit of danger (
Gee, thanks for the heads up
). Under no circumstances are you supposed to run, which triggers the bear’s instinct to chase prey. Nor should a hiker lie down and play dead.

For the most part these enormous, furry animals are unchallenged in the wilderness with the exception of armed humans (which, incidentally, don’t have a perfect record against bears). Black bears, ursus Americanus, have made an astounding comeback as hunting laws have become more restrictive. They now dot the Appalachian mountain range virtually from beginning to end, and chances of encountering one is not low at all. I was amazed to see monuments, drawings, and photographs of bears in almost every town along the Appalachian Mountain Range. Ancient cave paintings show the fascination and fear these enormously powerful creatures engendered, and there remains a general fascination here in the twenty-first century. And with human development encroaching on their habitat, the number of attacks is on the rise.

Shenandoah National Park (“the Shennies” in AT lore), which runs 104 miles from end-to-end, is considered one of the easiest parts of the AT. To be sure there are one thousand-foot climbs, but the trail is well-graded, and the inclines rarely more than ten or twelve degree angles. Indeed, I recommend the park as a good practice place for somebody trying to decide whether to attempt the AT.

Because it’s a national park, hunting is not permitted. As a result, there’s a prevalence of large animals, notably deer and bears—and they’ve largely lost their fear of humans. By some accounts there is a greater bear density in Shenandoah National Park than anywhere else on earth—more than one per square mile. And unlike in the Smokies, which we traversed at high elevations in the early spring, while the bears were still foraging at lower levels, we would be in “the Shennies” in high summer. Thus, when I entered the park it wasn’t the usual things—weather and difficult terrain—that occupied my attention. It was bears.

At the seven-mile mark I came across two hikers struggling to extract water from a grudging spring. “Any luck?” I asked, walking up on them.

“Barely,” the barrel-chested Colonel Mustard replied.

His diminutive friend Pee Wee added, “There is a creek that runs pretty well a few hundred yards ahead.”

I bolted ahead, and upon arriving at the creek looked around to make sure I wasn’t invading the drinking space of any large animals. I heard a rustling sound on the other side, but it didn’t distinguish itself from the hundreds of such sounds one hears here throughout the day. It never ceased to amaze me how much noise a mere squirrel could make. I took the bait every time I heard one.

After drawing some water I climbed out of the creek. Colonel Mustard and Pee Wee were passing by with wide-eyed looks on their faces. “Did you see that cub?” Pee Wee asked.

“No, where?” I asked.

“A minute after you passed us a cub ran down the hill between you and us.”

“Did you see the mother anywhere?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “and we weren’t about to wait for her either.”

So now I had a one-second glimpse of what was apparently a large, but scared bear in southwest Virginia and a near miss of a cub here at the beginning of Shenandoah National Park. Everybody seemed to have great tales to tell on this entrancing subject except me. But I wasn’t envious.

Camel and Bear came along while I was taking a break off one of the Skyline Drive crossings. They were two of the more likeable members of the Sleazebags and I was glad to have their company. As we sat there a car stopped and the driver opened his trunk to offer us a choice of soft drinks. Life wasn’t bad.

We reached the Blackrock Hut at dusk, after what would be the first of a string of twenty-mile days. Because of an estimated six million annual visitors in the park I had perhaps expected something palatial. Instead, the shelters were modest abodes, but the sturdy native rock gave them their own distinction. It was classic CCC Depression-era stone work.

Over to the side were the bear poles we had heard about. After dinner I went over and used one of the heavy iron poles to hoist my food bag up onto one of the rungs, about twelve feet up.

“Quit staring up there, Skywalker,” Bear said noticing my hesitation. “Not even Shaqille O’ Neal or you could reach it; much less a bear.”

But two days later I did find myself in a faceoff with a full-sized adult bear (mentioned earlier). It was the longest thirty seconds of my life. Finally, it slowly turned around and sauntered back up the trail in the direction it had disappeared before. This time I wasn’t so calm and continued my mock two-person dialogue. Skyline Drive was only a few hundred yards away, and I pondered bushwhacking through the ferns to get there. But I would have had to walk right through the bushes where this bear had originally been to get there. Who was to say there weren’t any more bears in there?

After waiting for someone else to come along in either direction, and maintaining the mock dialogue, I very tentatively started down the trail toward the bend where the bear had disappeared out of sight. Just before reaching the bend I stopped and threw some rocks in the direction the bear had gone to alert it that I was coming. Finally, I took a wide turn to get a better view of anything just beyond the bend. Nothing was there, so I hurried up the trail, scanning the shrubbery on both sides as I continued muttering.

Later, I talked to Bear and Camel who had passed this way soon after me. They had come across a bear at virtually this same point. The bear had stood in the middle of the trail on its hind legs, and the dense bushes on both sides of the trail blocked passage. They threw rocks near, but not at, the bear. The bear growled and continued blocking the trail. They then saw two cubs nearby so they realized it was a mother protecting her family. At that point they headed through the fern trees to Skyline Drive, just as I had previously contemplated doing. If you ask me it was rational behavior on the part of both the mama bear, and the two hikers.

I arrived in high spirits at the Hawksbill Mountain Shelter that third evening in “the Shennies” after having done 65.6 miles in three days, and reveled in telling the tale of “my” bear.

“The bear was probably trying to sucker you into dropping your food bag,” Pee Wee said.

“I’ll have to admit,” I replied, “that while it didn’t tear away or look scared, it didn’t look aggressive either.”

“Sounds like it was a good
starter
bear,” Pee Wee said.

As I trooped through the lush foliage and gentle hills of Shenandoah National Park, bears had now gone from something in the recesses of my mind to front and center. Two nights later I slept at the Gravel Springs Hut, and was stirring around early in the morning when a large black animal appeared climbing through the dense shrubbery in front of the shelter. At first I thought it was the black Labrador of one of the people tented out behind the shelter. But then I saw the prominent snout and wide face and realized it was not a canine, but something much larger. A bear emerged twenty yards in front of me.

Again, besides panic, I felt deceived. With a dog around bears were supposed to stay the hell away. Even though no dog is remotely a match for any half grown bear, the ancient enmity between bears and dogs is well known. And this bear looked in my direction, but it was the second bear in a row that didn’t run or even look afraid of me. So there I was once more, carrying on this mock conversation and waving my hiking pole in the air at a nearby bear. Finally, it slowly turned away from the bear poles and moved back down through the shrubbery from where it had come.

One of the tenters then walked from the tent-sites past the bear poles. “A bear was standing there five minutes ago,” I reported. He froze in his tracks and I quietly took pleasure in seeing another of these “don’t ever worry about bears” hikers tense up when a bear was actually around.

I had been planning to hike out at first light that morning, but quickly changed plans to wait and hike out with the group camped behind the shelter. After being on hair-trigger alert at the mere sound of a pine cone being stepped on or a twig snapping the last few days I greatly enjoyed having company. But my companions took a side trail and I was alone again in Shenandoah National Park with only one mile left. Although I had hiked most of the park alone I became suddenly and irrationally paranoid about bears. The upshot was that I was hurrying, and when the trail went down a rock scale I tumbled headlong down the rocks. Luckily, I braked myself at the last minute to avoid serious injury, but my arms and knees suffered deep bruises.

When the AT exits the northern boundary of Shenandoah National Park it runs for a miserable mile on private property, with a fence along the left side, and dense, high grass on the right, blocking any breeze. All along the way I kept hearing gunshots in the distance. While the owners were probably none too happy to have hikers traipsing along their land I assumed it was probably bears rather than hikers they were shooting at. In a ghoulish way this made me feel more secure.

Ug and I were hiking along the next day and when we heard some heavy rustling in nearby bushes, he playfully said, “Heeeer, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

“Wow, aren’t you brave,” I said impressed.

“No need to worry about these-here bears,” Ug said confidently. “They’ve been hunted and will stay away.”