Nehaveigur

Talk with backpackers anywhere in the Western United States, and eventually bears will come up.

I’ve come across bears a few times and they now make me less anxious than they used to. I knew all along that that black bears aren’t dangerous to hikers who behave sensibly. After discovering bear scat on the trail late in the afternoon, that knowledge didn’t prevent me from lying awake for hours during the night, listening into the darkness.

My first encounter with a bear was while hiking the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island with a friend. At the trailhead, we encountered a French medical school student who was in better shape than us despite smoking cigarettes at every opportunity. He took off and we thought we’d never see him again.

On the second day, we saw a lone bear on the beach 50 meters away. We looked at it, it looked back, decided we were not interesting, and ignored us while we tiptoed past.

After a few kilometers, we met the French student again. He was waiting for us by the side of the trail sitting on a log. His encounter with the bear had been more dramatic: He had walked around one of the boulders that littered the beach and had run into the bear. They were both startled and had faced off, staring at each other at touching distance. They then ran off in different directions.

After this, he didn’t feel like continuing the hike alone and joined the two of us, which turned out to be enriching as he was an interesting and entertaining fellow. Later that summer, I heard from him continuing his travels in the far North, kayaking down the Yukon solo. He must’ve gotten over his fear of bears.