Bearly Edible: The First 1000 Miles

The most heart-stopping moment of my first thousand miles has to be the encounter with the 350-pound black bear. Toward the end of a wonderful week of camping in Sequoia National Park, on one very memorable day I was approached by bears two different times, and I was also pursued by a deer with a big pointy rack.

First, the bear that nearly got me: I was taking an early-morning hike to Tokopa Falls (?) from my campsite here at Lodgepole in Sequoia National Park. I had gotten up at the crack of dawn and was the only hiker on the 3.5 mile roundtrip hiking trail. After trying to get some nice shots of the slender waterfalls, and enjoying a little snack waterside, I started on the trail back. Immediately next to the waterfall, there's a field of gigantic granite rocks that you have to walk around and through to go down the trail. Close quarters at times, then opening up at times, lotsa hidey-holes in the fallen rocks.

So there I am, just trucking along, and suddenly, scrambling up the granite rock pile, about 20 feet away, is a juvenile black bear. We both stop in our tracks, surprised. I do the manly thing and scream, and begin a blind reverse sprint back up the trail. I scramble to a rocky outcropping where I can throw myself into the river canyon below if I need to, and turn back to meet my fate. Except now he's hidden in the big rocks somewhere. Then he pokes his head over a slab of granite, peering down at me. He stares for about 10 seconds and then takes a sniff. Then his head disappears.

Oh God, I think. About ten minutes ago, I had an English muffin, messy with (medicated) peanut butter and a big, juicy, squirty orange. The bear must be thinking I smell great, like a snack.

On these big and small slabs of granite, there are no twigs to snap, no gravel to scrunch. So if that bear is moving around, I can't hear a damn thing. Carefully, I retreat some more. I'm thinking maybe I should go back to the waterfall and at least wash the orange juice off my hands, the peanut butter off my goatee. Maybe take my pants off and wash off the peanut butter that spilled. The bear would get a clean breakfast, at least... I'm worried that I would be responsibly for getting a bear stoned.

Thinking of next week's headlines in the Yosemite Yawler, I wash my hands and face, but keep my pants on.

I wait for a while longer, but there is no sign of bear. I hope to have bored him into submission. With any luck, he is looking for other juice-sprayed, peanut-butter-smeared prey coming up the trail. .

I have to go down that trail at some point, so I prepare my camera for extreme close-ups, take a deep breath, and begin inching my way through my granite gauntlet, and the near-certain, hopefully-short mauling.

It took me twenty minutes to get through about 100 feet of rock, finger on the camera trigger. God, let my successors at least have good video. God, I have no successors! What exactly is a successor, anyway? 

Listening for the slightest sound, scarcely breathing... But, eventually, no bear. I make it to relatively open territory, and at no point can I see bear... Disappointed, I vow to come back tomorrow morning. 

But later that day, a different bear wanders through the campsite. Then later still, a big buck follows me around. As soon as I can learn to manipulate photos and videos, I will post video of these animals taking a liking to where I was standing. Even though I washed all the orange juice off, I changed out of the peanut butter pants, I was a target that day all day. A predatee, as it were...

Had I been traveling in a straight line, these first one thousand miles would have taken me all the way to Tucson, Arizona, just 80 miles north of the border crossing at Nogales. Instead, I found myself at the corner of Blackstone and Shields in Fresno, California, when the odometer marked its fourth digit. I traveled the coast along Highway 1 in and around Big Sur, down to San Luis Obispo, then inland to the Sierras. I've just been chased from the high country by forecasts of snowfall. I don't want to ride my bike in snow, I don't want to camp in snow, I don't want to fight bears for the last of my peanut butter in the snow.

So Fresno.. This is a return trip, I had stayed with Chris and the kids a week earlier, but now Chris was in Mozambique visiting Mona at her Peace Corps gig, bringing 450 pounds of clothing to distribute to

the villagers where Mona has her concession. I'll find a fleabag hotel to fit my budget, find a laundromat, and watch the Giants work toward a World Series appearance.

The next thousand miles will take me to Southern California, and now that fall has come to Arizona, I'll cross the Mojave desert and visit family and friends in Phoenix and Tucson. Inshalla. I hope you all are well and wise.