Chapter 5: Meet Your Bear
After that worrisome winter passed and spring blossomed, the time came to arrange upcoming summer adventures. I faced a dilemma: I loved adventuring but sensed that if I was to grow through this floundering phase, I had to bail out of all upcoming external adventures with Mary and my friends and start a solo internal journey. I had to explore my fears, my mortality, and the concept of afterlife—the wilds of aging—just as I have explored wild lands.
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Mary
and my friends would eventually call this my morose period. Some saw it as an
exercise in self-pity. But whether they liked it or not, whether I liked it or
not, I felt compelled to make this my next adventure. Or, as Mary and I termed
it on a trip to Yellowstone a few years ago, I had to meet my bear.
***
After we had spent several days and
nights deep in Yellowstone’s backcountry and had grown more comfortable with
its wildness, we planned to spend the day hiking into the middle of the upper
Lamar Valley, where wolves, bison, and bears roam. We hoped to see some of
these creatures, and the wide-open spaces of the valley would allow us to do so
from a safe distance. We parked the car along the road, put on our daypacks,
and started hiking toward the distant Lamar River.
As we walked along the valley floor, a
solo hiker with long strides overtook us and stopped to chat. He looked to be
about twenty-five years old. A faded green baseball cap pushed raggedly cut
brown hair over the tops of his ears. His face was ruddy, with a strong chin
accented by the red bandana around his neck.
When Mary asked where he was going, he
turned away from us, pointed toward the distant mountains, and said that he had
eleven more miles to go before reaching his campsite along the Lamar River.
While his back was turned to us, I studied
his blue backpack. It was loaded, compact, and organized, the pack of an
experienced hiker. That relieved me, as he was heading for a wild part of
Yellowstone.
“Have you seen any wildlife?” Mary
asked.
He turned back to us, smiled, and said,
“I saw the same grizzly four times when I was camped along the Lamar last
week.”
“Four times?” I asked in amazement. “And
you stayed?”
“Yeah. And it definitely knew I was
there. One time when I poked my head out of the tent it was upriver looking in
my direction.”
“That must have been a little scary,” Mary
said.
“It was,” he said, tugging his cap down
tighter onto his head. “And that’s why I’m going back to the same spot.”
“So you can see the griz again?” I
asked.
“I sure hope so,” he said with a dimpled
smile.
After the hiker left, Mary and I walked
on, holding hands and talking about him. He seemed like a capable backpacker,
not a tourist in a hulking rented motor home asking where he might find a
roadside bear to photograph. But still, he was returning to a potentially
dangerous situation, one that had scared him just days earlier. He was, we
decided, going to meet his bear.
That saying became shorthand we would
use to describe intentionally going to places—mental, physical, or
emotional—that scare us.
***
As
I considered a solo journey to meet my bear, I understood that its challenges
would not be measured in miles cycled or mountains climbed. Instead, the
milestones would be emotions felt, bodily changes acknowledged, friends and
loved ones lost, and maybe even wisdom gained.
Of
course, I would journal, just as I had on adventures beside countless mountain
streams or country roads. But on this journey I would write in our backyard.
And
I would do more than write. After thirteen years away from serious gardening—at
one time, digging in the garden was as predictable as spring equinox—I yearned
to dig again, to see what I could nurture in the garden as I coaxed changes
within myself. I would even try gardening year round, a new approach that would
allow me to work—and write—in the garden whenever I needed to, be it spring,
summer, fall, or winter. The garden would become my refuge where I could dig
deeply into growing and dying.
As
seasons came and went, I would see which plants grew, which feelings sprouted,
which ideas blossomed. I would cultivate an understanding of where I had come
from and where I was going now that the deaths of Jana, Daniel, and Misty and
that tough summer of biking and hiking had finally smashed my wall, shattered
that illusion of unending youth.
As my life felt up for grabs, I decided to meet my
bear. To retreat to the garden.
Rick Lamplugh writes and photographs to protect wildlife and wild lands.
His bestselling In the Temple of Wolves; its sequel, Deep into Yellowstone; and its prequel, The Wilds of Aging are available signed. His books are also available unsigned or as eBook or audiobook on Amazon.
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Be safe sir ! Don't want to loose my favorite wolf and wildlife conservation expert that i have grown to honor and respect ! I may be going to meet my Bear soon also - but in a different forum . Good hunting my friend .
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