Camping among the Bears

Page 5

It had been ten restless days of brutal hiking with overweight backpacks to slow us down. I didn’t want to think about the distance we overcame, but Brother James (our leader) was boasting loudly over dinner, “We’ve gone over a hundred miles.” Quite an accomplishment, especially since the majority of it was up. Still, I just wanted to finish my food and finally reward myself to a comfortable, nights rest rather than dwell on all the pain I had accumulated over the course of our hike.

We filed in a single line as we marched unified back to camp. Suddenly the guy in front of me stopped instantly and I slammed into the back of him. I was going to give him a mouthful since I was far from a mood of playing games, but he chirped softly “There’s a bear in the bush in front of us”. I could tell by his frightened tone that he wasn’t trying to throw a trick over my head. Oddly enough I felt nervous, as well as the other people huddled about us. We had heard horrific rumors of nasty bear attacks from random campers and were severely warned to watch out for them. Yet we failed to see a bear anywhere until this last evening.

“What should we do”? One of the younger guys uttered as he pointed towards the bush.

I thought quickly back to what we were told in case we encountered one these monstrous creatures and said the first thing that came to mind, “Quick throw rocks at it!”

The bushes rustled violently as torpedoes of rocks flew randomly into the abyss of leaves. Suddenly I heard a “thud” sound from a rock and a pathetic whimper.

“We got him” I cheered! With that there was a sigh of relief that was felt by our group. We went back to our tents and I finally got a peaceful, worry free, nights rest. In the morning, to our disgust all our food had been torn open and eaten. Brother James was laughing at the sight “Who got who?”