Why am I pensively holding a rock in this picture? What possessed me to hold it Shakespearean ‘Yorick’ style and then bring it back from Beautiful B.C. to Ontario?
This stone was my saviour. Yes my rock solid answer to anxiety. The kind of anxiety you experience when you stumble across black bears whilst blissfully hiking on your birthday.
Well, at least I thought it was.
Now granted, if you know a bit about bears, you may know the phrase used when referring to a black bear siting — “see bear don’t care”. Not a terribly useful catch phrase when encountering a big ass animal in the woods. However, it speaks to the hopefully harmless nature of black bears in certain scenarios.
Unless it’s a baby and its mom situation. In that case, the catch phrase is “see baby bear, loudly swear”
I’m no nature aficionado. I admit freely I know little to nothing about the wilderness lifestyle. Unless living in downtown Toronto as a women in her 30s trying to date counts. (It does.)
But when it comes to mother nature, I pride myself for always acting in accordance to this irrefutable fact that has thus far served me quite well;
Mother Nature will fuck you up.
I find it interesting we refer to quite possibly the strongest force on earth (nature) as female.
Is it because nature is fickle? Is it because it is moody and unpredictable? Piss pouring rain again! Mother nature must be on her period!
Hardly. (And can we PLEASE stop labeling these as primarily female traits. Some of the moodiest beings I know are male. These are not gender specific characteristics)
If you take a step back and look at nature you see she follows unapologetically brilliant, well established patterns. She operates on a level of checks and balances and inter-connectivity that we have only just begun to understand. We are a microcosm in her intricate design. She is wise, powerful and does not make mistakes. Her reactions are not uncalled for, ruthless or unstable. No. This divine feminine force is seeking to maintain equilibrium.
We are the fickle dumbies who keep messing it up.
In the midst of nature doing her best to maintain her incredibly masterful and complex systems, we are the petulant children constantly tricking ourselves into thinking we have control, or worse, that our actions don’t affect this world.
This brings me back to rocks and bears.
My sister and I set out to complete the one thing I desired to do on my birthday; a fun and frolicking hike in the woods. Easy enough, right?
Not so much.
We head towards Joffrey Lakes, a now popular hiking spot thanks to Instagram (sarcasm) that has three stunning lakes on its windy route towards the BC heavens.
We arrived at the parking lot, already full of humans. I headed to the port o potty before we would venture into the forest. While waiting in line, I observed people dressed in flip flops, carrying Louis Vuitton handbags and donning crop tops. They seemed to think this appropriate hiking attire. Mind you the route is 10km in total with elevation changes and the temperature that day was a brisk 10 degrees Celsius. But hey, flip flops and steep, rocky mountain sides are the new black!! #trending
That wasn’t nearly the most concerning, thing witnessed.
I came back from using the rather ripe facilities to see my sister looking flustered and distraught.
B.C. is coming to the end of its worst summer on record for forest fires in the history of the province. ITS WORST SUMMER ON RECORD.
My sister had seen tourists strolling off into the forest which at this point is essentially a ginormous tinder box, smoking cigarettes and flicking burning cigarette butts into the dry brush.
She told them they could not do that, and she received a look of such disdain and disgust she was fully shocked. She had every right and responsibility to speak up, and I love her for it all the more.
But did these idiots listen? Sadly we can all guess the answer.
So we did not go into this potentially catastrophic situation. We walked back to the car, the selfishness of these people baffling us and several other hikers who witnessed this utter stupidity and decided to exit stage left. Instead, we went to find cell phone signal so we could report these assholes.
And I do mean assholes. This and the mother nature rule I remain steadfast too.
So away we went in search of new, idiot free adventures while praying to God that in spite their best efforts to throw off the balance, these cretins would be foiled.
We drove into Whistler and decided to try our hand at a quaint little hike called 27 switchbacks.
Turns out it was not terribly quaint. It was a rather vigorous workout that took us deep into mountain woods.
I would later learn from my brother in law, a seasoned outdoorsman who is a part of the Search and Rescue team in Pemberton B.C. that all survivalist books say, “when one is in the forest, and said forest becomes eerily quiet, and one feels like something is watching you…. something is watching you”
In BC there is little to no birdsong. Having grown up in Ontario I am used to chickadees, sparrows, blue jays, and cardinals chirping away when out in nature. That day, as we hiked, the woods were dead quiet. Too quiet. I felt deeply unsettled, like something was near. I pushed it aside, afraid I would come off as the scardey cat city slicker who couldn’t handle a little bit of nature.
Don’t do that. Listen to your instincts folks. Saving face isn’t worth coming face to face with animals the same size or larger than you.
We were on the 20th switchback, my sister hiking ahead of me when she suddenly held up her hand to stop me. She started clapping, yelling and picking up stones to forcefully throw. I saw why she was acting like a crazy lady when I looked 20 feet ahead and saw a yearling black bear startled by our sudden appearance.
I quickly followed suit, immediately feeling the futility of our rock throwing endeavour. I felt outside of my skin, my whole body in fight or flight mode. While feeling frightened, I was simultaneously feeling frustration – frustration at the fact that if this bear chose to, it could run right at us and attack. We’d just have to deal. That rock solid saviour I’d been holding in my hand to throw near the bear (not at it – calm down PETA) would reveal itself to be the false sense of security it really was.
Happy Birthday to me!!
Thankfully this fellow was young, and more interested in berries than human bodies. He had started to climb a tree, got tired, climbed down and decided to eat berries and then trundle off while Darolyn and I danced around like mad women clapping rocks together. What a time to be alive!
My body still quivering with anxiety, we continued on. And I kid you not, a mere 50 meters later we met bear number two.
A black bear bum was several feet in the air clinging to a tree trunk. I saw the hairy bum. My unbridled reaction to mother nature’s cruel sense of humor, spilled out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop it,
“Are you fucking kidding me!?”
The clapping, rock throwing and yelling began once again. This time I was a bit more pissed. This time, the bear was too.
Not good.
My sister observed this black bear was more scraggly, not healthy and obviously more hungry. We had wandered into their buffet of berries and interrupted the dining party. This guy took a bit more convincing to bugger off.
I turned to my sister and said, “I’m okay with turning back”. Not so much a statement as a thinly veiled demand that we turn the hell around!!
“Me too” she said succinctly in agreement.
Thank the sweet Lord we headed back down the mountain. My body and mind still on high alert, but my heart so freaking happy to be leaving that eerily quiet place filled with large forest creatures. Grateful to have my sister with me all the while, someone who knew what to do when you have a run in with a bear. Someone who kept her cool and by extension helped her baby sister remain calm in the face of overly large fuzzy animals.
Once we could hear highway noises Dee and I both visibly and audibly relaxed. We started to laugh it off, joking in our offbeat sister humour,
“Remember that time we ran into two bears in the forest? Yeah, good memories.”
We laughed to release nerves, warned fellow hikers who were heading up the mountain about the bear buddies they might encounter.
Once we reached the car my body managed to fully relax. I sat in that little metal box so blissfully happy to be held in its bearless bucket seats.
On my 34th birthday, the gift I chose was to make it to my 35th. Life goals really get distilled when you have the crap scared out of you.
Darolyn and I joked about hypothetical people who may have pressed on, even in light of the bears. We were satisfied with our self preservationist choice to turn right around. We attributed it to our 60 plus years of collective wisdom and our well intact ability to “quit while we’re ahead”
She and I don’t mess around with mother nature. Neither of us wants to get fucked up.
At this stage in my life I am a city girl. I adore some nature and actively seek it out on the regular. With that said, being able to rest in places of running water, no bugs and coincidentally no bears still highly appeals to me.
However, these humbling encounters with the power and prowess of mother nature keep my ego on lock down. They are perspective giving experiences.
So you think you’re hot stuff? You think you can do anything? Encounter 300 pounds of wildlife without any form of defense on hand and then talk to me.
That rock I was holding was not just my pseudo saviour, it was my reminder of the fragility of my existence. The false sense of security we all cling to when we experience the true majesty and massiveness of nature.
So can we all agree to stop trying to mess mother nature up? Instead I vote we all sit back and marvel at her mind-blowing grandeur. Her intricate systems of give and take.
I felt compelled to write this story because it contained evidence of human idiocy, natures’ might and life’s fragility. A trifecta that I was grateful to encounter on my birthday.
Annoyed and flummoxed by the thoughtlessness of man I find myself thinking of Shakespeare once again, “Pardon me, thou bleeding peace of earth that I am meek and gentle with these butchers.” I hope to use this next year to continue to make decisions in my life that honour and protect this amazing planet.
Left stunned by the might of mountains and huge mammals, Shakespeare comes to mind as well, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin”. May I, and we never forget that in her intricate web, we are all connected. We are all a part of nature.
Finally, life’s fragility. A fact that makes its value all the more undeniable. That perilous, confounding gift of life which can be taken so easily. Again, Shakespeare sums it up, “O call back yesterday, bid time return”.
Another year, another adventure. I am so glad I’m not Yorick quite yet.
