Bear With Me

I ask you to bear with me because this post is very long. I love thinking about old things. One of my fondest memories as a kid was going to camp. Not the kind that people would send their kids off to in the summer, but a family camp. I can remember the year we got it. There was a huge celebration that year. My father had gotten enough raises in his job as a meat cutter and delivery driver that he finally grossed over five thousand dollars in one year. You would have thought we had hit the lottery.

My mother had been saving out of the family store for a time too. So they scraped the money together and bought the camp next door to their best friends. It all sounded very mysterious to me. I had no idea what a camp was. But when my father came home with a bicycle for me, I was convinced it would be a wonderful place.

The trip to the camp took forever. I laugh now at those times when we would go because it was only about 40 miles. But as a kid, to me it was Never Never Land and the distance only made it more enchanting.

Upon turning off the paved county road it would be another seven miles or so on a dirt road filled with huge holes. If we could keep the tires on the car, we'd have it made. Turning onto that road also began the lectures. I can't remember a time we went there that the lectures didn't happen.

My father was an avid outdoorsman. He loved hunting and fishing. And for as long as I can remember he tried to teach me respect for nature and its inhabitants. It was more or less a case of you leave them alone and they will leave you alone. Don't tread on their territory. And when you are out in the woods just remember, it's their territory, so respect it and them. When in doubt, RUN.

When we arrive I see the two structures in the middle of a small clearing. Aside from one lone camp about a mile down the road, there is nothing within miles. I am instructed that if I can't hear music, I am too far away and I had better get back to hearing range.

Their friends were already at their camp. They had five kids and there was me and my brother who was an infant. I would have built-in playmates which I didn't have at home. I was in Heaven for sure.

The clearing wasn't really clear. There were a few small trees and millions of blueberry bushes. And it really wasn't a clearing either. It was perfectly rectangular seemingly just cleared of trees to make it an acceptable place to build two camps.

As one would expect of the wilderness, there was no electricity or running water. We had oil lamps for light and there was an old pot-bellied stove in the middle of the camp for heat if we needed it. And there was a wood stove for cooking. Just what we needed in the sweltering heat of summer!

The well was just outside the clearing in the woods a short way. I hated it when they would send me for water. I'd have to lift off the wooden cover to drop the bucket down the well. Always there were spider webs covering the opening. God, how I hated that! Every time I would get done with the water run I could feel spiders crawling on me. There were never any there, but I could feel them anyway. I'd have to stop ten times before I got back just to keep brushing them off. Once my father saw me and laughed. After that I did all my brushing off before I got into the clearing.

The camp was one huge room with five beds in it. Once dusk came there was no more outside play. If we went over to the other camp (which happened every time we were there), it was en masse. No one was allowed out alone, except for the men.

The summer passed much too quickly as I lived out my life on that road filled with holes and bicycled my way to the outer limits of my imagination. When we finally buttoned it up for the summer, I felt a deep sadness sweep over me. I had to go back to reality and stay there... for a whole year! How could I survive?

But life is life and time passes. In the dreams of a child though it seems to stand still. But as a little time went by and school started, I was soon swept up into the learning process and forgot about the camp. I'd think of it time to time, but I didn't feel that urgency any more. It would have to wait.

The New Year came and went and before you know it Spring had sprung. Sometime in May Dad went off one weekend and came back saying he thought we might be able to go to camp in another few weeks. That was the best news I had heard in.... forever! But I would soon find that a few weeks is, indeed, a very long time.

The winter snows at that elevation were much worse than ours. That hole-filled road would be impassable at this time of year. Oh how I longed to go bike riding again.

When I think about camp these days, it was surely a labor of love that my mother did. She had to load the car up with all manner of things. When she got there she still had housework and cooking to do. And when she got back there was all the bedding to wash and all those things to put back where they belonged. Where was the respite for her?

So here we are again on our first trip back to camp, back to fantasy land for me. The summer went well. I played as do all kids. And I looked forward to each coming weekend knowing I would be swept away to that wondrous land.

Near the end of July my mother gave me a bucket and told me to pick blueberries. That would be another thing I would come to despise: blueberries. Oh I love eating them. I just hate harvesting them. I spent that whole weekend picking blueberries. I had my 10-quart pail and I can't remember how many pails I picked. We would be taking them home so she could do some canning. She had these old wicker laundry baskets. She lined them with cheesecloth and I would empty my pail in them. There were three of them. That's a LOT of blueberries!

We went to bed on Saturday night after we had come home from the other camp. It was pitch dark in there. I lay there into the middle of the night thinking about all the wonderful things there. I loved being outdoors all day with not a care in the world. I have no clue what I was thinking about. Soon I drifted off.

I woke up in complete distress. It might not have been distress had I been home. But this was camp! No running water, remember? And I had to go to the bathroom. There was an outhouse for that waaaaay in the back of the camp near the edge of the clearing. It was still pitch dark.

We had a chamber pot for such things. But I had to do Number Two.. OMG, OMG, OMG! There was no way I was doing that in there. I got up very quietly and went to the table. I struck a match to see what time it was. My father always left his watch on the table. It was almost 5am. The sun would be coming up soon. Maybe I could hold it.

No sooner did I have the thought than I had an urge that was much bigger. There was no time to waste. A decision had to be made. And so I grabbed my father's flashlight and went out the door and ran to the outhouse. He was an early riser, but I knew I could make it back in and no one would be the wiser.

I sat out there and was ever so glad I had made this decision. Pee-yew! The outhouse had cracks that you could actually see through. They were tiny ones, but I had noticed that the first time I used it. The sun would sift in through those cracks. And as I finished I noticed the pitch wasn't so black any more. The sun was about to rise. If I gave it about ten more minutes I wouldn't have to worry about getting caught. I wouldn't have to use the flashlight. So I just sat back down to wait.

After about two minutes I heard something. It sounded like someone walking through the bushes. I had been caught, I thought. It stopped and my panic subsided. And then it started again. I went up to one of the cracks and looked out. I couldn't see anything even though the sun was nearly all the way up.

And then I heard it right in front of the door! Even the door was cracked. So I went to the door and looked through. It was a bear! And as I held my breath, I saw two little ones following her. They were feeding.

My father had told me all about bears. They are always dangerous. They are doubly dangerous when feeding. They are triply dangerous when they have their offspring near. My mind went numb. Was I to multiply two times three or add them? All I knew was I was in mega danger. They can smell humans a half mile away. What was I to do?

And so, I started screaming. Even as a youngster I had a booming voice. On this day it would be my saving grace. Now she didn't run or anything like that. The voice wasn't enough to scare her. She had probably seen better adversaries. But the screaming got the attention of my father who came running out of the camp, gun in hand. He began running toward the outhouse yelling at the top of his lungs. Even he didn't scare her either.

My heart is pounding at this point. I see the neighbor guy come running out with his gun too. I think, "OMG, they're going to shoot the bear!" Dad pulls his gun up and I hit the floor. I hear BANG! BANG! BANG! And then nothing. I'm not sure if I should get up or just lay there and die. I am in SO much trouble. Nothing happens for about 45 seconds.

Dad just about yanks the door off its rusty hinges and screams, "Get in the camp, NOW!" Oh brother, am I going to get it now. I ran into the camp never so glad to see a place in my life. It turns out that he was shooting in the air. And bears may not necessarily be afraid of humans themselves, but the noise from the gun scared her off and when she ran, so did the cubs.

It was a very, very long ride home that day. And I heard about that story for years after. But the way my father told it, it was the odor that made the bears run. If only, if only...

Happy Bear-less Berrying!