Late October is a beautiful time of the year in the Eastern Sierra high country. Stands of aspen trees have dropped a dense bed of yellow leaves on the forest floor, yet still hold enough against the wind to flutter atop their white-barked trunks and branches. Those same winds rob the sky of her clouds by day, and then go to sleep as the sun falls behind the jagged peaks above.
Most roads and hiking trails west of US-395 between Lone Pine and Bridgeport enjoy the eventuality of water, and it is these lakes, creeks, and streams that beckon me here. Armed only with a backpack of essentials, a fly rod, a good pair of boots, a decent knife, and several years of memories and experiences, I try to find my way into the wilderness with some regularity. Life has a tragic way of taking our therapies and cathartic endeavors away before resolving our challenges and misgivings, the way we lose loved ones long before we bury enemies. But I go when I can, even if it isn’t near often enough or as frequently as it used to be.
Trout season closes in November for almost all fishing waters up here, reopening in April. 2019 found me here again, alone between my birthday and Halloween, camped on the shore of a depression at the base of a 1500 foot escarpment. Pines and aspens stood with their own kind, splashing a ring of green and yellow around the cobalt blue waters of a smallish lake, with a backdrop of steely gray granite above to frame it all against the cornflower sky.
A bald eagle flew overhead without sound, larger in real life than they look on coins and stamps and NatGeo. The words of the same-named band flew through my mind: This could be heaven or this could be hell.
“Either way, I’m alone,” I said to no one listening. Which begs the question: if a crest falls in the woods, does it make a sound? Only the crestfallen know for sure. And I’m not talking. The search for outer solace and inner peace charges a high price for words.
The day had been the kind of quiet most folks in cities and suburbs never really know. The deafening silence of the outdoors isn’t really quiet at all– there are abundant, perceptible stimuli for the ears to capture and the brain to process. The wind in the trees. The cries of birds and buzzing of insects. The hollow musical sounds of water being disturbed by a brown trout jumping at the end your line. The crunch of earth and leaves underfoot heading back to camp. The sound of a knife passing through a fish as you fillet it. The crackling of fire, the sizzle of cooked meat threaded onto a field-prepped willow skewer. Your own breathing… your own heartbeat if you really listen.
No cars, no dogs barking. No neighbors or coworkers, none of the sounds of your house like toilets flushing or kids arguing or inanely redundant Roblox music playing in the other room even though I said, “You can watch a movie but no video games!”
Self-imposed solitude took its toll on my energy, in the best of ways. As the violet sky cooled towards darkness, I extinguished my fire, walked back to camp (you don’t cook or eat near where you sleep in bear country) and carefully lay down in my screen-top tent to watch the stars overhead. My eyes heavy, it wasn’t long before I was fast asleep, snug as a bug in my mummy bag.
I awoke with a start as the side of my tent collapsed inward, the zippy sound of nylon against claws just a few feet away from my face. It seemed that a local resident had taken an interest in me, or at least in determining if my rip-stop nylon could hold up to 400 pounds of woodland chicanery and hijinks.
When bears are featured in movies, they always overdub that unmistakable roaring growl, a bellowing ARGHGHGHH! sound, that in several encounters with large woodland beasts, I’ve never actually heard. This bear was no different– I just heard the whooshing sounds of her breath, the solid ruffle of fur against my helpless tent, the hollow clicking sound of teeth in her maw, and my own terrified voice somehow disconnected from my person as I yelled at the top of my lungs. ARGHGHGHGHH!!! It was my own voice that echoed off the canyon, as she quickly retreated, her heft and paws and claws resonating as she ran about thirty feet and stopped.
Then silence.
The collision montage of thoughts and memories, of being awakened by an apex predator far from anyone who could help let alone hear, flashed like movie stills in my mind’s eye. And they came to rest on a singular image, a celestial soulmate, hearing the news that I was gone. Incredibly, he survived four decades and countless urban adventures, only to be taken by his beloved nature in what Neil Gaiman wrote was a “Thin Place”: where the distance between heaven and earth is significantly closer than usual.
But the bear didn’t charge back in; she just circled slowly just a bit farther than my dying headlamp could illuminate her form, betrayed only by the reflections of her retinas against the pitch black background, until I heard her turn and walk away on those same crunchy aspen leaves I had trodden earlier in the sunshine.
For a solid hour, I just sat there, wondering, waiting. I fired off a couple of text messages from my phone, despite having no service, wondering if they would only be read after I was long gone, missing, with only a torn up tent and a primitive camp site standing in silent vigil in the Eastern Sierras as my final testament to existence.
I finally gathered the courage to stand and quickly gather up my things. I stuffed my tent into my bag, laced up my boots and walked down the hill through the darkness to my truck, fully 6 miles away on a turnout. I arrived as the sun broke over the distant Eastern mountain range on the other side of the Owens Valley, half frozen, my toes numb and teeth chattering in my dry mouth. Probably still in a little shock, only then did I realize I’d just hiked without putting on socks, and I had the blisters to prove it.
I have no idea why that bear did what she did– I keep a clean camp and I practice bear safety in the backcountry… better for people, and better for bears. Maybe it was just her way of saying hello? And driving down the two lane road towards the 395, I decided not to report it officially. Instead, I elected to hold on to the tale… maybe it will have meaning someday? Maybe I’ll find some sing-songy allegory to wax poetic and wistful in the future.
For now, it’s just a story of a guy looking for something, who found something else altogether. Not life-changing, but not life-ending either.
Maybe that’s the moral of the whole thing after all.
Wanna go camping?
El Gigante Picante del Monte 