Page 63 of Wild About You
I almost resent the woods in daylight for how nonthreatening it all seems. As if they played a mean trick on me by being so terrifying at night, and for so much of the time I’ve spent out here. I can almost feel them snapping back at me, saying, “Hey, that’s your own issues doing this to you! Don’t blame us!”
The fact that I hear the woods talking to me definitely reinforces said issues’ existence. I wonder if Grandma Gatewood talked to herself much on the AT, whether mentally or out loud. If she narrated everything she was seeing like I sometimes find myself doing. Pretty wildflowers opening up their petals to the sunlight. Peaceful breeze rustling the trees. Who gave you all the right to look so idyllic, like I’m in a fairy tale?
Yeah, that’s right. I’ve turned over a new leaf, pun intended. I’m not scared of the forest. I’m embracing it. I am one with the trees. I am gonna find my partner, who supports me and wants to be with me. I will keep working on my issues, because if I can do everything I’ve done out here, I can confront my inner demons. And I’m gonna win the money, go back to Oliver paid up, my future as bright as today’s sun.
I’m so swept up in my inner monologuing that I almost don’t see it. But then my head snaps in a cartoonish double take. Not fifty feet off the trail I’m walking along, the living, black-fur-covered embodiment of my biggest fears is nosing around in the undergrowth.
A black bear.
I come to a stumbling stop, snapping a twig underfoot in the process, and the sound has the bear’s head poking up, turning in my direction. All breath leaves my body as I look into its face for the first time, its dark, fathomless eyes sizing me up. Considering if I’m a worthwhile snack, most likely, or if it should stick to scavenging for berries and greens. What was I saying about not being scared anymore?
Every dark, pessimistic instinct in my body is back on alert, screaming that this is the end, that I had a good run, I guess, but we knew it was only a matter of time before something got to me out here. I’m trembling from my core out to all my extremities, torn between the urge to run like hell and the complete inability to move an inch. Dazedly, I reach my hand back for where the bear spray is normally clipped to my pack’s side, but it isn’t there. Shit, did I put it in the pack by accident?
Making the mental calculations, I figure by the time I can take off my pack and dig through it for the spray, this creature will have pounced, or whatever the bear equivalent is, latched onto my puny arm, and started dragging me off to its cave to share with the wife and kiddos. It feels like if I take my eyes off the threat for even a second, it’s game over.
God, my only hope is that this bear is a vegetarian like Finn.
Finn. Finn, who told me exactly what to do if I find myself in this situation, back in the very first conversation we ever had. Distracted as I was by his sudden appearance, by the whirlwind of our first day on Wild Adventures, all of it, I still retained a lesson or two from that chat, didn’t I?
The bear takes a slow, heavy step, then another, not really toward me but not in the opposite direction either. Its eyes stay on me, anyway. Swallowing the bile I feel rising up, blinking back the terrified beginnings of tears in my eyes, I comb through my memory.
Finn said the rules were different for black bears versus brown. This one is decidedly black. Which I think means…less threatening? I’m almost positive this was not the kind with which I’m supposed to drop down and play dead. That doesn’t feel right. And not that I’ve ever seen a bear in the wild, but compared to the ones I’ve encountered in zoos over the years, this one doesn’t seem huge.
Realistically, though, the chonker still has to weigh, like, twelve Natalies. And I can’t even imagine the kind of sharp, menacing teeth hiding in its deceptively cute snout. If playing dead is most effective with the scariest bears, then it has to work on the less scary ones too, right? My knees bend, about ready to drop to the dirt below and cushion the way down for the rest of me.
But something makes me pause. If playing dead worked with all bears, why wouldn’t he have just told me to do that? There was another option. I recount how the conversation went as best I can, straightening when I remember standing on my toes and lifting my arms in the air before yelling at Finn about his pockets. That was it. With black bears, you try to appear big and intimidating so they’ll run away. I eye the terrifying fluffball, now stopped with its nose pointed up as if sniffing the air. Can it smell my anxiety from over there?
When its front paws leave the ground, the big head and torso slowly rising, the time for floundering is over. Before I think it through any more, I grab on to the pieces of tent fabric hanging at my sides, clutch a handful in each fist, and raise my arms in the air as I rise onto my toes.
“HEY!” I yell, projecting to the back row of the biggest theater I can imagine. “WHAT CAN I TELL YOU THAT WILL GET YOU TO RUN OFF WITHOUT EATING ME TODAY?”
The bear freezes in a half-upright stance. I wonder what they think of this human-sized, nylon-winged butterfly that’s just appeared and started yelling at them. Does anything about me right now say “bigger, stronger predator”? I don’t want to insult this animal’s intelligence.
“WE BOTH KNOW YOU WOULD WIN IF THIS ACTUALLY CAME DOWN TO A FIGHT. BUT I’M SCRAPPY WHEN I NEED TO BE.” Nothing is happening. Why isn’t anything happening? “I PROBABLY WOULDN’T TASTE GREAT EITHER. TOO MANY ARTIFICIAL INGREDIENTS. LIKE, ON MY FACE. ALL KINDS OF CHEMICALS. SOME PURPLE DYE IN MY HAIR, TOO. DO YOU EVEN EAT HAIR? THAT SOUNDS DISGUSTING.”
The bear must agree. Its front legs drop to the ground again while it continues to eye me. This feels like major points on my side of the scoreboard.
“THAT’S RIGHT. WALK AWAY, NOW. YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE ME WHEN I’M ANGRY.” I think that’s something the Hulk says, isn’t it? I feel a little bit like the Hulk right now, with this whole big-and-scary act. Mentally, I pat myself on the back for pulling off “intimidator” so well. “IS IT JUST ME, OR IS THE HULK KIND OF A SUPERHERO-Y GLORIFICATION OF TOXIC MASCULINITY? LIKE, OH, I’M SUPPOSED TO SEE THIS GUY’S ANGER ISSUES AS A POSITIVE? I’D NEVER SAY IT IN MIXED COMPANY, ’CAUSE I HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIES AND DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE HULK OTHER THAN RAGE AND MUSCLES AND GREEN MARK RUFFALO, AND I DON’T NEED DIE-HARD MARVEL FANS ROASTING ME OVER A CAMPFIRE. BUT I TRUST YOU TO KEEP IT BETWEEN US.”
Okay, so it’s good the bear doesn’t seem to understand English. But even better is that, after only a little more of my rambling medium-hot takes on popular media, the bear looks away. My yelling voice shakes with a wave of relief that rolls through me, but I know I’m not safe yet, so I keep talking. And ever so slowly, one paw at a time, the large animal turns itself around and lumbers in the other direction from me.
Still yelling nonsense, still holding up my tent cape around me, still stretching myself as tall as possible, I backward walk on down the trail.
“…SO PINE WAS ALWAYS THE BEST CHRIS. I’VE NEVER HEARD ANYTHING TO CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE. LIKE, HE READS BOOKS! HE HAS A FLIP PHONE! I’VE ONLY RECENTLY REALIZED THAT A GUY BEING KINDA ANTI–MODERN CONVENIENCES IS A TURN-ON FOR ME, BUT I’M NOT ASHAMED TO ADMIT IT. AND THE MORE HE LEANS INTO THE SILVER FOX THING, HOT DA—”
“Natalie,” comes a sharp whisper from behind me, and I let out a garbled shriek as I whirl around, tangling myself up in a blanket of damp blue tent and tripping on my own feet in the process. I pitch forward, smashing nose-first into a hard chest.
“What the fuck!” I wheeze, but muffled in the woodsmoke-scented cotton of Finn’s T-shirt, it comes out as more of a “Wrrrtthwfrrrh.”
It’s only when his steady hands clamp down on my shoulders and push me to stand back up that I realize my whole body is shaking like a leaf. That new leaf I allegedly turned over, before getting scared shitless again.
“Shhh,” he soothes, starting to unravel the tent from around me with a furrow between his stern brows. “You’re okay. You’re safe now. You can stop running bear defense.”
“Y-you saw it too? The bear? Th-that was a bear back there. I…I ran into a bear.” My words are choppy, my breaths sawing unevenly out of my lungs. I didn’t notice any of this while I was yelling—or maybe it wasn’t happening, didn’t start till my adrenaline crashed. When Finn, having fully detached the tent from my person and tossed it to the ground beside us, brings his hands up to frame my face and his thumbs to swipe tears from my cheeks, it dawns on me that I’ve been crying. Who knows how long that’s been going on, either? It’s ahead of schedule today.
“I saw it,” he confirms, lips forming a flat line as he watches me warily. “Our meetup spot’s just back there. I saw you coming this way, then you froze, so I started toward you to see what was up. Then stopped when I saw the bear. Then I was like, ‘Hey, jackass, maybe you should go help your partner somehow.’ But then you started talking.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “It was clear you had it under control.”
In an instant, I’m doubled over, my whole body heaving in hysterical laugh-sobs. I feel my backpack jostle and let Finn remove it for me, vaguely registering through bleary eyes that he turns both of our GoPros off. Then his hands return to my back, my shoulders, gently patting around. His voice floats down to me, murmuring assurances that I’m safe and did a great job, and I can’t form the words to let him know I’m not, in fact, having a total breakdown.