Thoughts from inside the bear's house
CRASH.
My eyes fly open. I am lying on my back.
I never sleep on my back. Where am I?
I am staring at the ceiling of a tent. I am momentarily confused as to why I’m in a tent. Then I remember.
Unconcerned, I glance to my left and swat at my phone. It lights up. 3:00 a.m.
What on earth was that crash?
I lay still, listening. For a moment it seems like…that was it. Whatever it is, is over.
I hear some gentle sounds. Vague. Nondescript.
Maybe it’s the wind? It was raining before… is it still raining a little? I guess these are just the middle-of-the-night sounds of the forest.
I’ve been in Fort Collins, Colorado for about a month and a half, spending my summer as the Music Director-in-Residence at Foothills Unitarian Church.
The work is incredible. The people I collaborate with every day are amazing. And Colorado is dreamy. It is stunningly beautiful here. There is so much to do. Most of it outside.
I initially arrived here on a Saturday evening in mid-June, and by midday Monday, nearly everyone I’d met had asked me whether I’d hiked yet or visited Old Town yet or been up to Horsetooth Reservoir yet or taken in any live music yet. I felt like I was already behind, even though I hadn’t even been there 48 hours and jet-lag had me asleep by 8:30 every night and the altitude sickness was just starting to kick in. That very Monday afternoon, I drove to Old Town after work and walked around for awhile just so I could start answering “yes” to some of these questions.
As I got settled in Fort Collins, I fell into a sweet rhythm of working and playing and receiving invitations into people’s homes and lives and adventures. And when I was invited to head up into the mountains and go camping on a lake, my answer was an easy and excited “yes!!!”
I listen. The sounds are no longer vague and nondescript.
They are footsteps.
Footsteps? What??
I am so still.
Is someone just making their way back to their tent from the bathroom? Did they forget their flashlight? Maybe they stumbled into whatever crashed a few moments ago? And what WAS that crash??
I am wide awake.
Earlier that evening, the sky had opened up.
It had been a blustery, drizzly day, but we were making it through, enjoying games and books and each other’s company. But then the rains came, hard and relentless, at 8 p.m.
We all scurried and scrambled to clean up. Board games and cards and remnants from dinner and snacks and drinks. We carefully secured our food, as is the cardinal rule of camping. We abandoned our plans to all meet up for a campfire (there were maybe 40 people or so, all from church, involved in this camping trip) and everyone made their way to shelter. We were all inside our tents by 8:30. I was comfy and dry and had my borrowed tent to myself. With the cozy and satisfying drumming of the rain just above my head, I was easily asleep before 9 p.m.
Okay, yeah. Those are definitely footsteps. And whoever it is, is walking on the grounds between the campsites. Or are they on my campsite? I can hear sticks snapping under the footsteps. The footsteps are heavy. The footsteps are slow. Those are heavy, slow footsteps. The heavy, slow footsteps are very close by.
My eyes are open wide and staring at the ceiling of my tent and the thoughts just keep going and going and going.
I wait.
I close my eyes.
I listen.
I hear more of the same.
Oh, God.
My heart sinks.
Is that a freaking bear???
I grew up in the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York. There have been bears roaming around the Adirondack Park for as long as I can remember. There were warnings of bears. There were bear sightings. There were mama bears with their baby bears. There were constant reminders to secure your trash.
But even though I held a constant awareness that we were sharing space with the bears, I never actually saw a bear for myself.
Yup. It’s a bear. It is definitely a bear. There is a bear outside my tent. I mean this bear is RIGHT outside my tent. She’s to the left of me right now. She’s lingering. Why is she lingering?? Also WHAT was that CRASH?!
Okay, wait. Think. What am I supposed to do when confronting a bear? Bang pots and pans together? Yes. Bang pots and pans together. Cool. I don’t have any pots or pans in here. Do I have anything loud and clangy in here? Of course I don’t. I’m in a tent. Don’t look around for anything. Do not move. Don’t make any sounds and don’t touch your phone and don’t make anything light up. Don’t call attention to yourself. Why does the material of tents and sleeping bags have to be so loud and swooshy? Don’t breathe. It’s too swooshy for you to even breathe.
My backpack is in here. Do I have so much as a granola bar in my backpack? No. I didn’t put any food in there. Just a water bottle. Do bears care about water bottles? There’s a whole lake like RIGHT there. There’s no way she’ll care about my water bottle.
Oh! My water bottle. My water bottle is metal. That means it’s clangy. But only if I have something to clang against it. So…okay. That’s nothing, then.
Wow I’m really glad I don’t have to pee. Imagine if I had to pee right now? I would have to hold it forever. Or pee in this tent. Ugh. That would be so embarrassing. This isn’t even my stuff. Okay. Stop thinking about peeing or it’s going to make you have to pee.
God, she is right on the other side of this wall. What if she comes to the door of my tent? My head is close to the door. Should my head be far from the door? Doesn’t really matter because I can’t move because everything’s too swooshy and she’ll hear me and then she’ll for sure come to my door. Okay. So this is where my head is. My head is so exposed right now. I have got to remember to never sleep with my head near the door again.
Okay so if she comes in here I’m just gonna jump to my feet and start screaming as loud as possible. Be really big and make a ton of noise. Right? You’re supposed to be bigger than the bear. And scare the hell out of it with noise. Ugh, am I really gonna do that? Am I gonna be the girl who screams like a maniac and wakes up this whole entire campground? I mean I’ll probably have to, right? But everyone’s probably awake already anyway though, right? Why aren’t we all texting each other right now? Whose number do I even have?
Maybe it’s not a bear. Maybe it’s a raccoon. Raccoons are a thing too, right? Are raccoons a thing in Colorado? They must be. Yeah. All those sticks are totally snapping under the weight of a raccoon.
Why is this bear so close for such a long time? And why my tent?
That’s when I heard a new set of sounds.
Oh. Oh wow. No, this can’t be. No one would have left that out.
But someone did. The rustles I could hear were unmistakable.
The bear started digging through someone’s trash.
Earlier in the day, I spent some time playing with three sweet children between the ages of 2 and 4. The two older children wanted my help building a little fort to “keep out the chipmunks.”
“How will we keep them out?” one child asked. “They keep running all over here! We want to keep them out!”
“Well,” I ventured, “it’s okay if the chipmunks run around. We’re really the visitors in their house. Nature is where the animals live, and when we go camping, it’s kind of like we’re the special guests. So we want to make sure we are very kind in their house.”
Accepting the invitation to go camping was an easy “yes.” I love camping. I love being outdoors, I love nature, I love campfires and swimming and board games and roasting marshmallows and kayaking and reading and hiking and journaling and sleeping when the sun sleeps and waking when the sun wakes and I love it all.
But at approximately 3:40 a.m., I had forgotten about all of that.
I’m in the bear’s house.
Why on earth would I put myself in the bear’s house? This is the bear’s house. We are the visitors. Whose idea was it to go camping? I mean not just this weekend. I mean whose idea EVER was it? To pitch these flimsy little plastic houses outside? Outside in the bear’s house? Why would we sleep on the ground in tents when we could be in houses with walls that are so sturdy and so safely protecting us? Whose idea was it that we ought to come out here, where we don’t belong, and try to insist on our presence?
I was guessing at this point that maybe an hour had passed, though I refused to light up my phone to confirm. I was still wide awake, listening to the bear going through this bag of trash. She had dragged it right behind my tent.
I was starting to feel unhinged. I had been so still for so long. And I felt so, so alone. I no longer remembered that there was any world outside of the “walls” of my tent. It was right about then that my thoughts started to unravel to places beyond my control.
If the bear really wanted a human, the bear could have had a human by now. There are hundreds of people sleeping in tents on this campground. Yeah, but she probably didn’t expect to have this feast left out for her. The feast is just keeping her from her human victim. That’s all that’s happening here. It’s an appetizer. Don’t lose focus. Stay alert. I’m most likely next. She’s way too close to me to decide not to pay a visit. This is probably it. I didn’t think this was how I was gonna go. But if she comes to the door I’m trapped. My only way out is to run AT her and hope to make it past. And then run like hell. And scream. She’s definitely gotta be faster than me. I also probably won’t make it past her. I wonder how big she really is. Either way she’ll take up that entire tent door frame. I’ll have to duck and dodge. And maybe dive. The ol’ duck-dodge-dive. Am I good at ducking and dodging and diving? I did pretty well at the trampoline park a couple months ago. That was actually a whole lot of ducking and dodging. And even diving. Okay. This will be fine. Channel trampoline park skills.
Why aren’t any dogs barking? There’s like a billion dogs on this campground right now. Shouldn’t at least one of those dogs have smelled this bear and started to freak out? And then set off all the other dogs? Come on, dogs!
I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to anyone. Maybe I should take a chance on lighting up the tent with my phone after all, and start texting people. But hold on, what if I text them, but then I don’t die, and then forevermore everyone just makes fun of me for the night I texted these long sappy ‘goodbyes’ right before I thought I might get mauled and killed by a bear? But what if I don’t text them and then I get mauled and killed by a bear and I didn’t get to say goodbye? And then they’ll just hear about it. How will they hear about it? Does anyone here in Colorado even know who they should reach out to on my behalf if I get mauled to death by a bear? Can they get into my phone and just search for people? Should I make sure my “favorites” are up to date? They’ll probably start with my “favorites.” Will they be able to get into my phone? They can still use my face to unlock it, even if I’m dead. Unless my face is so mauled that it’s unrecognizable. Or unless my phone gets mauled too. My phone might not survive the attack either.
This is ridiculous. I’m not going to get mauled and killed by a bear. And neither is my phone.
But when this is all over I really ought to do some recon on some stuff now that I’m out here all divorced and single and roaming the planet by myself and not sure who I’m supposed to be listing as my “emergency contact” these days. Also, does anyone out there know what my end-of-life wishes are? I really want to make sure people tell funny stories about me. At my memorial I really want people to laugh a lot. That’s super high priority for me.
With whom does one share these things, once one has lost one’s life partner? Need to figure this out for myself. Unless I do get mauled. Then I’ll just have to hope there are people out there who know and love me and will know what to do to celebrate my life.
Is anyone else still awake? Surely a whole bunch of people woke up from that crash. Also, what even WAS that crash?!?! Is anyone still awake like me? It’s been over an hour, easy. Surely everyone has fallen back asleep by now. Every single person on this campground is sleeping through this and I’m just out here wide awake. Unless others ARE still awake and having the same experience I’m having. Are they going to tease me in the morning for being afraid? Does this happen a lot in Colorado? They’re just super used to bears? Do they live among the bears, over here, no problem?
Is this even happening? Is it even a bear? I just know I’m going to emerge eventually and tell everyone that there was a bear outside my tent for like 90 minutes or more and they’re going to tell me I’m crazy. You’re crazy! There was no bear! That’s just camping noises, silly paranoid New York City girl.
Slowly, eventually, the bear ambled away. Or at least, I had to assume she did. The rustling of plastic stopped; the clanging of cans and containers stopped. I checked the time. I dozed off for a very short time, shortly after 5 a.m.
And at 5:34 a.m., I was wide awake once again. I was still laying on my back. It was light out. I wanted so much to get up and go take in whatever was left of the sunrise down on the water. But even though dawn had broken and the bear had pretty clearly moved on, I felt scared to emerge. I told myself I wouldn’t be going anywhere until I heard something human-sounding outside the walls of my tent.
I finally started to hear zipper sounds from other tents. So I, too, got up and went outside. That’s when I saw the grill toppled over onto the ground.
Ah. THAT was the crash.
I walked a few campsites over to join friends who were already busy making coffee.
“How’d you sleep?” one friend asked.
“Fiiiine,” I said slowly, side-eyeing him for any sign that it hadn’t all been a figment of my imagination. “How did you sleep?”
“I slept great,” he said. Then he paused, looked at me, and continued, “Until the bear came around.”
The whole morning — the whole day, really — was abuzz with everyone’s recounting of their own experience. Indeed, the sudden 8 p.m. downpour had led to some cleanup negligence, and thus, the bear’s lengthy feast as she enjoyed a bag full of watermelon rinds and whatever else was in there.
Indeed, the crash had woken several people up. Not everybody, though. There were some who had peacefully slept through the whole thing. Including most of the dogs.
One person did actually see the bear. Most of us only heard her, imagining what she must have looked like, how big she must have been. And evidence of her presence was everywhere. It was in the strewn-about trash. It was in the punctured 5-gallon water jug. It was in the toppled grill. And it was in the dented frying pan she had chomped down on.
So, there it was. Confirmation. And plenty of it. There was a funny mix of relief and continued tension as we shared our stories and vantage points. Some were lighthearted, others were fraught with a nervous energy. The daylight brought comfort. Coffee was brewed, English muffins were toasted over the fire, and slowly, we all emerged into a beautiful day.
The recounting of my thoughts seems like a dramatic retelling, even to me. But they were so clear and present as I retold them to my camping buddies that morning, and remarkably within-reach for me to recapture with clear accuracy in a long voice-note later that day. I was so alone with my thoughts for so long. And they were so loud. And their echoes lingered so strongly. And as they jumped around from one string of thoughts to the next, the calm stillness I was forced to maintain in my body was a wild juxtaposition to my racing heart and racing mind.
I wonder about my instincts. I wonder about my problem-solving. I wonder about my physical strength and I wonder about my scrappiness.
And I wonder who I’m going to start putting down as my emergency contact.
OMG I laughed so hard.
Had me on the edge of my seat... WHEW