Peanut Butter and Tortillas and Bears, Oh My!

Bears are a tricky sort of threat when you are camping without an enclosed vehicle. Most people just leave their food in a locked car, but I got used to leaving it in outhouses, tied up in trees, or sometimes I just threw away whatever scraps of peanut butter and tortillas I had left to avoid the drama of getting mauled. As I moved west on my journey I noticed more and more signs posted at campgrounds depicting hungry bears and the consequences of leaving food unprotected overnight.

In September I found myself in Durango, Colorado looking for a place to camp.  Durango sits in the largest range of the Rockies, the San Juan Mountains, in the southwest corner of Colorado. The complex landscape offers diverse and extreme ecosystems, from the semidesert shrub-land at 4,000 feet to the alpine tundra at over 11,000 feet, all housing a wide variety of plants and animals, including bears. One campground sat at about 6,500 feet, an elevation that provides hot day time temperatures that drop to below freezing overnight in the late summer. Although evening was still a couple hours away, the cold mountain shadows offered a preview of the night to come.

I pulled into the campground and walked into the visitor center.  A petite, older woman was sitting behind a desk and offered a friendly, “Hello!” I told her I just needed a tent site for the night, and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, my honey! It’s going to get cold tonight! It’s just you and your tent?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “What do you mean by cold? About how cold?” I was used to night temperatures dipping into the low 50s, so I was prepared to let her know that I could handle such a case.

“Oh my, it’s been in the low 30s lately, we got a frost last night.”

When you have an impulsive mentality like mine, it’s hard to imagine things that aren’t in your immediate reality. When it’s sunny out, I have trouble considering what activities will be like in the dark. When it’s relatively warm, I struggle to imagine getting cold in low temperatures. The way my brain works is something like this. “Just….don’t worry about it.  Until you get there.”

Anyhow, despite my initial shock about the temperature, I informed the woman that I’d bundle up and be fine. And I somehow believed it. She ran my card, handed me the receipt, then wished me luck. Before leaving I suddenly thought to ask about bears and food storage.

“Oh, I haven’t seen any bears around here, dear. As long as you keep your food in your car you should be fine.”

Fine. This is bear country, but fine.

I rode to my site, parked the bike, and began to unload my things.  I took out my granola bars and potato chips in preparation for a lazy dinner and saw some neighbors set up their tents. I decided to take her word for it and left the rest of my food in my bag. I leaned my backpack against a tree about 8 feet from the tent, filled with the remaining camping gear and food, and laughed at what I saw when I took a step back.

I totally didn’t do that on purpose.

As the shadows grew darker I searched for my headlamp in order to make my way to the bathrooms to brush my teeth. I found it in the top compartment of my bag, with the switch turned to “on” but with no light shining out. I guess it had gotten turned on at some point and drained the battery, which I had no replacement for. It didn’t matter too much because I had a light on my phone, and I figured once I fell asleep, what would I need a light for anyway?

On my way back I met a couple of guys camped next to me who introduced themselves as Charles and Rick, friends from Canada exploring BDR, or Back country Discovery Routes.  This kind of riding is off-highway and challenging. Their bikes seemed pretty big for back country terrain, but Charles explained that despite skepticism from fellow riders, they loved the challenge and triumph of working their way through complex terrain.

I sat down with them at their picnic table and we shared stories and pictures from our respective adventures. They showed me photos of their camp sites in the middle of the wide open desert where there was not another soul around.  When asked about my travels I explained that I had ridden from Massachusetts to California and was now making my way back home.

Rick attempted, “Massa-tu-chet… yeah I think I’ve heard of that. Where is that?” I was shocked by the question, until I realized that I couldn’t picture where Alberta was, either. “We know about California,” Charles said, “And like, New York and big cities, but not much else.”  Then they laughed at my attempt to pronounce Saskatchewan- so we were even.

By the time we had shared some small conversation I noticed that our breath was visible in the light of their headlamps. I rubbed my hands together, said good night, and made my way to my tent to prepare to sleep.

As I walked I noticed how stiff my body was from riding all day and from the chilly air. I reached in my bag and put on 2 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, a sweatshirt, 2 pairs of wool socks, a winter hat and gloves. I took my remaining clothes and shoved them in my sleeping bag for extra insulation.

I checked my phone to find the battery at 3%, probably drained so far because of the weak service in the mountains. “Good thing I’m comfortable and don’t have to get up again until the morning,” I thought, foolishly.

I closed the flap of the tent and found myself falling in and out of a rigid half sleep. The kind of half sleep where you know you’d be knocked out if only it were just a few degrees warmer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spent hours in a crappy, shivering, half sleep just because I was too lazy to get up and get another blanket. In this case the only other layer I could add was my riding gear. I tightened the string on my sleeping bag to cover my face, hoping the new warmth on my nose would spread to the rest of me. A couple of times I grew impatient with my shivering and went into an abrupt fit of kicking and wriggling to build up more heat, but this warmth proved temporary.

I don’t know how long I put up with this baloney half sleep for but I finally got fed up enough to get my gear from outside. With my arms still tight in the sleeping bag I rolled out of the tent, grabbed my gear with my elbows, and rolled back into the tent. There was only a thin sliver of moon out tonight, and with no flashlight I realized how lucky it was that I had indeed set everything up in the daylight.

It was a tight fit in my cocoon of a sleeping bag, and I noticed that my options for escape were pretty limited if I needed to fly out of there. But as the  new warmth relaxed each muscle in my body I realized that I didn’t care.

I was rustled awake by strange noises, and it took me a few moments to remember who I was and where I was. “Ok, you are… Kristin! And you’re in your tent in… Utah? Nope you already saw Megan in Gunnison so you’re in Colorado…ok…Durango! You’re at the campground in Durango! Got it. Ok, so what is that noise… you’re neighbors? Maybe their readjusting their sleeping situation, too.”

But I soon realized that this noise sounded much closer than my neighbors. It sounded like it was coming from the tree where I’d put my backpack. I heard footsteps in the dry leaves and movement around my bag. “Am I being robbed? Are Rick and Charles robbing me? Oh my god what do they think they’re going to find besides mediocre food and dirty clothes?” My tired brain decided that if I was being robbed that I didn’t really care to investigate it until the morning.

The sounds continued and as I slipped from the dream world into waking consciousness, I realized what was actually happening, and I shot straight up.

“There is a bear outside of my tent.”

My body froze. My heart thudded. My ears pounded. My eyes opened wide.

It was dark. So dark in fact that it made no different whether my eyes were open or shut.

Holy shit. There is a bear outside. There is a bear right next to me.

Everything was dead silent except for the pounding in my ears and the animal outside. Every micro movement I made seemed to pierce the air and give away my existence.

I kept my body perfectly still. My lungs were short of air but I only let them fill part way.

There were sounds of crunching leaves and sniffing, followed by scratching and heavy breathing.

I heard the bag outside fall over and land on the ground. As my heart continued to pound a horrified panic arose that the bear would hear the surging blood and opt to eat me over my trail mix.

The rustling continued, and I tried to convince myself that it could be any animal out there. Even a deer. Maybe a raccoon. But a deep “grumph” shattered any hopeful image of a gentle animal. My arms and legs became paralyzed.

The darkness was consuming. Although other senses intensify when one is compromised, sight was the most terrifying tool to lose. No matter how I squinted and strained and tried, I simply could not see more than very vague outlines inside my tent.

I must have sat frozen for at least 45 minutes, horrified, listening to the sounds of digging and rummaging. I waited, waited, waited. What was I waiting for? Death? Over and over again my mind played the grunting sounds moving toward my tent. I could almost feel the weight of 800 pounds of bear tear through my canvas wrapper and crush me to the ground. I imagined it’s hot breath on my face, it’s razor sharp claws slicing my back as the last breaths were forced out of my body.

Every escape plan I imagined failed, over and over. First of all, I was so tangled in my sleeping bag, it would be a miracle if I could get out quick enough without tripping over myself. Second of all, it was too dark to run. Third of all, I know I can’t outrun a bear. The only option I could see was to sit in complete silence and wait until it ate all the food and moved onto another camp site. Would it walk away? Please God let it walk away.

I could hear my bag being tossed around in the leaves, and dread settled in my gut like an anvil.

I wished I had gotten the numbers of the guys camped next to me to text for help, then remembered that my phone was dead anyway.  No phone, no light.

It’s amazing how long your body can sustain a fight or flight (or freeze) response. I’ve never felt my heart pound in my throat for so long. My mind was present and alert, completely immersed in every ticking second suspended in the air. There was no room in my mind for any other thoughts. I had to squeeze my escape plans from my prefrontal cortex as if from a dried out orange.

As the moments hung in audible stillness, I heard each compartment of my bag being explored and torn through. I heard straps come undone, fabric rip, then the crumpling and rustling of the plastic liner. I heard muffled breathing from inside the bag and pictured the bear’s head engulfed with its body sticking out. It was almost comical. Almost.

Then I heard sharper sounds of plastic crumpling, the sound of food wrappers. There was a brief struggle, then crunching sounds. Sounded like she found the granola bars.

The frustration of blindness soon took a hold and I decided to risk opening the tent to get a look at the last thing I might ever see. I took a shallow breath in and began to wiggle my fingers. With incredibly delicate movements, I sloooooowly removed my arms from my sleeping bag. So slow in fact that it must have taken me 4 or 5 minutes to remove them all the way. The grunting and chewing continued outside. I stopped to take a silent breath. I wiggled a toe, then another, then slooooowly eased each leg from the garments in the sleeping bag.

My body was outside of the chinese body trap of a sleeping bag. My hand searched for the zipper to the tent door, and my fingers found and gripped the cool metal. I began to pull it up so slowly that each zip took 5 seconds to come undone. I could feel each bump come loose, one by one, “bump…bump…bump…” An eternity passed but the animal didn’t seem to notice my movements. There was hardly a pause in her gorging.

The zipper reached the top of the tent. With a shaking hand I slowly peeled the flap open. And do you know what I saw standing 5 feet away from my tent?

NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! I COULDN’T SEE FUCKING SHIT! IT WAS PITCH BLACK AND I COULDN’T SEE A GODDAMN THING OUTSIDE OF MY TENT!

If I felt doomed before then I don’t know what I felt here. I tried to come to terms with the fact that this might be it. This might be my end. Out of all the ways I could have died on a motorcycle, I was going to die from a bear attack. This was it.

Suddenly I heard a “Pop!” followed by more movements.

What was that? More rustling, then all of a sudden-

Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.

My ear moved to the open flap, totally alert.

Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch…

I felt a giggle bubble in my gut. “No Kristin, this isn’t funny, you’re terrified and in danger.”

Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch…

“But seriously are those my potato chips?”

Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch…

“Do bears eat that fast?”

Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch…

My mind began searching for all the information it knew about bears and eating habits. It scanned through all the footage it had seen on Planet Earth, all the scenes from movies, all the descriptions I’d read in survival books, scouring for information on how fast they chew. “This is ridiculous, even if you remember seeing how fast they eat, you’ve never seen them eating potato chips…” But I really couldn’t imagine a massive, 1,000 pound animals munching on anything that quickly. But then how could I explain the loud grunting? Could a raccoon have a voice that deep?

Whatever animal was out there, it finished the chips and the bag fell lightly to the ground. Even though I was still terrified, I felt the grip on my abdomen release as my breathing became more regular. Even if I wanted to stay freaked out, something in my body told me that I really didn’t have anything to worry about. I heard steps in the rustling leaves pace back and forth for awhile, then gradually fade into the distance. My head collapsed on my pillow.

I awoke the next morning in sweltering heat, the sun pounding through the top of the tent. It took quite a struggle to come out of the layers of riding gear, clothing, and the sleeping bag. My head pounded and my eyes felt puffy. I stepped out of my tent to find my bag torn apart, food wrappers and supplies scattered all around the site.

I picked up my bag and got something wet and green all over my hands. “What the-?” It was absolutely all over my bag.  “What is this?”  It was cold and slimy.  For a very brief moment I thought it might be the guts of another animal that the bear had killed, or maybe the saliva of the monster who had actually been rummaging through my stuff all night.

On the ground several feet away were the remains of an exploded avocado. It appeared that the animal had a difficult time opening it, then out of frustration just squeezed it with all it’s might and smeared the remains on everything in sight. It was as if she was saying, “Hey, thanks for the food, now I’m gonna SMEAR it all over your STUFF to show my appreciation.”

As if the peanuts and potato chips weren’t enough you ungrateful animal you. At this point I’m pretty sure it was a raccoon.

I walked over to Rick and Charles’ site to find they hadn’t fared much better, except that they had slept through the whole night. I was so tired and groggy that I decided to enjoy the fact that I was still alive by taking a warm nap in the sun.