Back On The Hike Again: The Night Of The Bear

Man, the things we take for granted in this life. A toilet, for example. Ever feel that stress when riding or walking somewhere and suddenly need to use the facilities? You probably think, boy, it'd be nice just to drop trou, and just go in a cow pasture like my little brother did. Me? I kinda prefer a nice flushable toilet, lots of privacy, and preferably not somebody banging on the door asking how much longer will I be in there. I am now proud to say that I finished the whole trip without having to make like a bear one single time...I found an empty privy whenever I needed it, and I also quickly got over any qualms about how dirty and smelly they were. Things like that were the bits of essential pleasure of our lives. Another example, you come off the trail and find a garbage can! Yay! I can drop all of that trash I have been carrying in my backpack for the last 3 days. And then there are the people...you'd think that the reason to go into the woods is to escape civilization, but for a lot of us, it's not to avoid human contact entirely. Whenever you came across another hiker, there was a middlin' chance that you would strike up a conversation about the weather, the trail, or gear, or anything that you might have in common. Our second night on the trail was like that, when we came up to the camping shelter and ended up spending the night with a father and son-in-law. We traded stories and tips about hiking, camping, and everything else.

Sometimes, my initial feeling was that I didn't want to meet any strangers, and then minutes later we are best friends. These two guys were IT workers in a hospital and carried a ton of first aid gear, some of which they donated to us, as it was their last night of their trip. That turned out to be quite fortunate later on.
The son was proudly showing us his high-end hammock, which had a mosquito net, rain fly and some secret method of getting in and out of it. Apparently, the only drawback beside having to learn how to get into it, was that your butt gets cold at night. I immediately crossed that idea off my list of things to try someday. And I still have some band-aids on me that back that notion up.

We were having a great time telling stories back and forth, when the son decided to make one last trip to the privy for the night. Now, a thing you need to know about this stuff, is that the privy and the water source were never near the shelter. I know the makers had their reasons, but plenty of people cussed about the distance to go fetch water. Surprisingly, no one ever complained about the distance to the privy.

He was gone for quite a while when we suddenly heard a lot of screaming and he came running up, saying that there was a bear on the trail to the privy. He was still pulling his pants up as he ran over to his hammock, dismantling it and dragging it into the shelter. You see, he was subscribing to what I refer to as surfer logic: 1 person in the water = 100% chance of getting bit by a shark. 4 people in the water = 25% chance of getting bit by a shark. His feeling, and mine was that with 4 of us in this 3 sided shelter meant that each of us had only a 25% chance of getting our feet nibbled on by a bear. Those odds worked well for me, and I fell soundly asleep while the 3 other guys stayed up worrying about the bear.

We all lived through the night and never saw the bear again, but something still puzzles me. I know that it is considered bad reasoning to think that bears think like people, but: everybody hangs their food from trees away from where they sleep. Bears use the same well-maintained trails that we use, why not, it's easier. But, a bear coming around a privy while somebody is sitting inside swinging their legs, makes me wonder.....were there two bears in the woods and one said to the other: "Hold my beer...I got this"?