Quaking Aspens by Tom Eubanks
(Due to technical difficulties, the usual Friday post of the next chapter of The Plunge will have to be delayed to next week.)
Near midnight one summer in 1988, embellished by the quiet of the forest, a crack of Styrofoam and flying ice quaked my wife Judy and me from a deep camper's sleep. Outside our six-man tent, two feet from the front opening, inches from our feet, a California black bear had smacked our flimsy ice chest into confetti.
Under the sleeping bag, Judy's hand gripped my thigh like the Incredible Hulk. She stopped breathing. My heart banged my chest like a wrecking ball. I caught my breath. We lay listening to the bear's deep hollow grumble, feeling his presence. And I thought: So this is fear.
Our two daughters, aged four and eight, were sound asleep, and the thought of one of them waking and panicking chilled me; I trembled.
"It's a bear," I said. I felt Judy's silent "no shit!" leaping from her brain to mine. I choked on my own words, because Judy's last reminder was for me to put the ice chest with all our perishable foods in the trunk before I came to bed. Never crossed my full-fledged city-boy brain that a stupid bear would know about ice chests and what campers put in them. Styrofoam insulates temperature. Ignorantly, I figured it insulated odor. So I'd left the ice chest sitting on the picnic table.
No sooner had the bear--let's call him Smarty-Pants--cracked open the ice chest than the ground shook from his trampling off into the trees, barreling through the brush with some of his booty. The salivating sounds in the distance delivered close-up images of tusk-like incisors to my already explosive imagination. But I couldn't help thinking, Please don't be the spicy sausages I'm cooking for breakfast!
Judy's grasp loosened slightly but didn't leave my thigh. She even took a breath. More like a gasp. We didn't speak. The silence left my imagination to fend for itself. Partly because of what we'd heard three days before during a brief interlude in our camping vacation in Big Sur and Mendocino. We'd spent two days with old friends in Fairfax, north of San Francisco. One of them was a wildlife biologist who'd recently returned from a trip to Montana where he studied wolves, and he'd told us that in a town in the northern part of the state the grizzly bears were doing something very unusual: killing and eating humans. The folks in town wore T-shirts that read BEARS 7 - PEOPLE 0. He'd told us that if we ever came upon a bear we should stay still and not panic. I looked back at him and said, "You wouldn't be shittin' me, would you?" To which he replied, "No, but the bear will if you don't listen to me." He'd said if the bear attacked I should roll up in a ball. Like a donut hole? To make it easier for him to swallow?
Finally, Judy whispered, "Think he'll come back?"
I thought, He's a bear. It's All-You-Can-Eat. But I said, "I don't know."
The words were barely out of my mouth when we felt the ground under our sleeping bags shake and heard the growling mastication of the bear eating from the array of goodies on the ground in front of the tent. The chomping and chewing and smacking and snorting went on and on, and I could bearly contain my fear. I felt the urge to scream, craving for a breath but afraid of making some noise Smarty-Pants might interpret to be an invitation to come into the tent.
I'd seen the posted warning signs at the entrance to Quaking Aspens Campground in this southern end of the Sequoia National Forest about this being BEAR COUNTRY. But the reality of the woods, on this our first night, hadn't sunk in. And now we had one big Smarty-Pants outside the tent, close enough to hear every chomp, hear him breathe and snort, as he devoured an irresistible midnight snack.
The day pack! It was filled with our dry goods: Campbell's soups, Bisquick, and the half-dozen boxes of macaroni and cheese mix. I'd left it on the ground next to the tree a few feet from the table. If Smarty-Pants got to that food, we'd have nothing to eat. We'd spent most of our money on the previous eight days of our trip. There was enough left to put gas in the Oldsmobile and get us back to Los Angeles. What will we eat for the next two days? Should I try rescuing the remaining food by scaring the bear away? How do I scare a bear? Can I even stand up? Or even move? The fear was like a boulder set on top of me, pressing me down, crushing the breath from my body and squirting a cold sweat through ever pore.
I raised my head from the pillow. Through the insect netting covering the front entrance, the humbling shape of the huge bear danced in silhouette. His size promoted a pretty solid prediction: Smarty-Pants won't scare. But as I watched him, I was tormented to see that he'd discovered our carton of Napa Valley wine. And he was tipping it up, letting the pink liquid wash over his snout, completely ignorant to any thoughts of the Wrath of Grapes.
Soaked in Chablis, Smarty-Pants wandered over to the tree and snatched up the day pack, tore it open like a candy wrapper and began biting the cans and boxes, plumes of white Bisquick billowing around his snout.
And then a most terrifying thought invaded my feelings of loss for our food. Was there any food in the tent? Oh, crap! What if the kids had brought a granola bar or cookies into the tent? We could scream. But I'd purposely chosen the remotest corner of the campground. No one would hear us. And my girls--oh, God--they'd be terrified, screaming, grabbing at their mother. I'd have to (gulp) throw myself between them and the claws and jaws of death. I actually pictured myself doing this, standing up to the bear, knowing my only hope was for me to satisfy Smarty-Pants' hunger with 200 pounds of real man.
But for the next half-hour we silently laid under our sleeping bags, breathing through our noses, praying the children didn't wake up, listening to Smarty-Pants treating himself to a hearty meal.
And then. When he finished with the day pack. He slowly lumbered towards the tent, with his head down, sniffing the air close to the ground, and the ground moved as he made his way past the entrance and along my side of the tent. My shoulder pressed against the inside of the flimsy green nylon. As the bear sniffed and smacked at the tent with his snout, I so wished, more than anything, that I'd upped my Karma by living as a vegetarian.
The bear loomed in shadow against the outside of the tent, his fur scratching against it, bending the nylon fabric, his claws breaking the bushes to get by.
And then he stopped.
Three inches from my face.
Only a thin layer of nylon between us.
He pushed his snout against the outside of the tent, testing it. I was face-to-face with a bear the size of a Volkswagon Beetle. So close that his rancid, hot breath blew the hair out of my eyes. We couldn't see each other, but we each felt the other's presence, smelled the other's odor. I held my breath to keep from smelling his breath and wondered if this was the way a hot fudge sundae felt before I devoured it?
The seconds were eternal. My mind literally blanked from fear. I was flat-lined awake. I suppose I was just waiting to see the bear's epiglottis--that dangly thing in the back of his throat--as I passed under it and down the Pirates of the Caribbean flume of his esophagus.
Then. With one last snort. In my face. Through the tent. Like a big Smarty-Pants "thank-you." The big black bear bounded off into the quaking aspens.
Judy stammered, "Is he, is he gone?"
"I think so."
Quickly I went outside, Judy bravely trailing after me. We gathered up the Smorgasbord debris and piled it up several yards away from the tent in the event he returned. The holes in the mangled soup cans were the size of nickles and dimes. He had eaten everything else--the box of Bisquick, the macaroni and cheese mix, cantaloupes, sausages, tortilla chips, eggs, licorice, a bar of cream cheese...and drank the wine. It took us several minutes to fall asleep, because we heard him up the camp, leaving a trail of banging trash cans in his wake.
In the morning, we experienced the real devastation. We had nothing to eat, no money and a whole day and night left of our vacation. The girls took it all as a great adventure--of course, they'd slept through the ordeal. Now, though, we had to forage for food. So I baited up the poles and we headed up the highway past the end of the Tule River to a spot known as Peppermint Camp. When I saw the sign, I thought, Peppermint sounds delicious! Only a few campers were lounging in chairs reading as we made our way down to the mossy stream. I found a good, deep hole, cast my line into it and thought:
This is roughing it!
Near midnight one summer in 1988, embellished by the quiet of the forest, a crack of Styrofoam and flying ice quaked my wife Judy and me from a deep camper's sleep. Outside our six-man tent, two feet from the front opening, inches from our feet, a California black bear had smacked our flimsy ice chest into confetti.
Under the sleeping bag, Judy's hand gripped my thigh like the Incredible Hulk. She stopped breathing. My heart banged my chest like a wrecking ball. I caught my breath. We lay listening to the bear's deep hollow grumble, feeling his presence. And I thought: So this is fear.
Our two daughters, aged four and eight, were sound asleep, and the thought of one of them waking and panicking chilled me; I trembled.
"It's a bear," I said. I felt Judy's silent "no shit!" leaping from her brain to mine. I choked on my own words, because Judy's last reminder was for me to put the ice chest with all our perishable foods in the trunk before I came to bed. Never crossed my full-fledged city-boy brain that a stupid bear would know about ice chests and what campers put in them. Styrofoam insulates temperature. Ignorantly, I figured it insulated odor. So I'd left the ice chest sitting on the picnic table.
No sooner had the bear--let's call him Smarty-Pants--cracked open the ice chest than the ground shook from his trampling off into the trees, barreling through the brush with some of his booty. The salivating sounds in the distance delivered close-up images of tusk-like incisors to my already explosive imagination. But I couldn't help thinking, Please don't be the spicy sausages I'm cooking for breakfast!
Judy's grasp loosened slightly but didn't leave my thigh. She even took a breath. More like a gasp. We didn't speak. The silence left my imagination to fend for itself. Partly because of what we'd heard three days before during a brief interlude in our camping vacation in Big Sur and Mendocino. We'd spent two days with old friends in Fairfax, north of San Francisco. One of them was a wildlife biologist who'd recently returned from a trip to Montana where he studied wolves, and he'd told us that in a town in the northern part of the state the grizzly bears were doing something very unusual: killing and eating humans. The folks in town wore T-shirts that read BEARS 7 - PEOPLE 0. He'd told us that if we ever came upon a bear we should stay still and not panic. I looked back at him and said, "You wouldn't be shittin' me, would you?" To which he replied, "No, but the bear will if you don't listen to me." He'd said if the bear attacked I should roll up in a ball. Like a donut hole? To make it easier for him to swallow?
Finally, Judy whispered, "Think he'll come back?"
I thought, He's a bear. It's All-You-Can-Eat. But I said, "I don't know."
The words were barely out of my mouth when we felt the ground under our sleeping bags shake and heard the growling mastication of the bear eating from the array of goodies on the ground in front of the tent. The chomping and chewing and smacking and snorting went on and on, and I could bearly contain my fear. I felt the urge to scream, craving for a breath but afraid of making some noise Smarty-Pants might interpret to be an invitation to come into the tent.
I'd seen the posted warning signs at the entrance to Quaking Aspens Campground in this southern end of the Sequoia National Forest about this being BEAR COUNTRY. But the reality of the woods, on this our first night, hadn't sunk in. And now we had one big Smarty-Pants outside the tent, close enough to hear every chomp, hear him breathe and snort, as he devoured an irresistible midnight snack.
The day pack! It was filled with our dry goods: Campbell's soups, Bisquick, and the half-dozen boxes of macaroni and cheese mix. I'd left it on the ground next to the tree a few feet from the table. If Smarty-Pants got to that food, we'd have nothing to eat. We'd spent most of our money on the previous eight days of our trip. There was enough left to put gas in the Oldsmobile and get us back to Los Angeles. What will we eat for the next two days? Should I try rescuing the remaining food by scaring the bear away? How do I scare a bear? Can I even stand up? Or even move? The fear was like a boulder set on top of me, pressing me down, crushing the breath from my body and squirting a cold sweat through ever pore.
I raised my head from the pillow. Through the insect netting covering the front entrance, the humbling shape of the huge bear danced in silhouette. His size promoted a pretty solid prediction: Smarty-Pants won't scare. But as I watched him, I was tormented to see that he'd discovered our carton of Napa Valley wine. And he was tipping it up, letting the pink liquid wash over his snout, completely ignorant to any thoughts of the Wrath of Grapes.
Soaked in Chablis, Smarty-Pants wandered over to the tree and snatched up the day pack, tore it open like a candy wrapper and began biting the cans and boxes, plumes of white Bisquick billowing around his snout.
And then a most terrifying thought invaded my feelings of loss for our food. Was there any food in the tent? Oh, crap! What if the kids had brought a granola bar or cookies into the tent? We could scream. But I'd purposely chosen the remotest corner of the campground. No one would hear us. And my girls--oh, God--they'd be terrified, screaming, grabbing at their mother. I'd have to (gulp) throw myself between them and the claws and jaws of death. I actually pictured myself doing this, standing up to the bear, knowing my only hope was for me to satisfy Smarty-Pants' hunger with 200 pounds of real man.
But for the next half-hour we silently laid under our sleeping bags, breathing through our noses, praying the children didn't wake up, listening to Smarty-Pants treating himself to a hearty meal.
And then. When he finished with the day pack. He slowly lumbered towards the tent, with his head down, sniffing the air close to the ground, and the ground moved as he made his way past the entrance and along my side of the tent. My shoulder pressed against the inside of the flimsy green nylon. As the bear sniffed and smacked at the tent with his snout, I so wished, more than anything, that I'd upped my Karma by living as a vegetarian.
The bear loomed in shadow against the outside of the tent, his fur scratching against it, bending the nylon fabric, his claws breaking the bushes to get by.
And then he stopped.
Three inches from my face.
Only a thin layer of nylon between us.
He pushed his snout against the outside of the tent, testing it. I was face-to-face with a bear the size of a Volkswagon Beetle. So close that his rancid, hot breath blew the hair out of my eyes. We couldn't see each other, but we each felt the other's presence, smelled the other's odor. I held my breath to keep from smelling his breath and wondered if this was the way a hot fudge sundae felt before I devoured it?
The seconds were eternal. My mind literally blanked from fear. I was flat-lined awake. I suppose I was just waiting to see the bear's epiglottis--that dangly thing in the back of his throat--as I passed under it and down the Pirates of the Caribbean flume of his esophagus.
Then. With one last snort. In my face. Through the tent. Like a big Smarty-Pants "thank-you." The big black bear bounded off into the quaking aspens.
Judy stammered, "Is he, is he gone?"
"I think so."
Quickly I went outside, Judy bravely trailing after me. We gathered up the Smorgasbord debris and piled it up several yards away from the tent in the event he returned. The holes in the mangled soup cans were the size of nickles and dimes. He had eaten everything else--the box of Bisquick, the macaroni and cheese mix, cantaloupes, sausages, tortilla chips, eggs, licorice, a bar of cream cheese...and drank the wine. It took us several minutes to fall asleep, because we heard him up the camp, leaving a trail of banging trash cans in his wake.
In the morning, we experienced the real devastation. We had nothing to eat, no money and a whole day and night left of our vacation. The girls took it all as a great adventure--of course, they'd slept through the ordeal. Now, though, we had to forage for food. So I baited up the poles and we headed up the highway past the end of the Tule River to a spot known as Peppermint Camp. When I saw the sign, I thought, Peppermint sounds delicious! Only a few campers were lounging in chairs reading as we made our way down to the mossy stream. I found a good, deep hole, cast my line into it and thought:
This is roughing it!
Posted by Tom Eubanks at 8/20/2010 11:45 AM 
Categories: Short Non-Fiction
Tags: Blast from the Past Just for Laughs
Categories: Short Non-Fiction
Tags: Blast from the Past Just for Laughs
Crap on a cracker! Ya had me scared, readin' it in my kitchen, safely drinkin' my morning coffee.
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You make my day when you tell me those kinds of things. The image of you eating crap on a cracker is discouraging, but....
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Holy Mother. The graphic descriptions of what happened were fantastic. It reminded me of the dinosaur silhouettes in "Jurassic Park" - I can't imagine a bear that close, but you brought me right there, man. And last week I took my daughter to the bear show at Clark's Trading Post in NH. One went about 340 pounds on the scale. Damn. I would be freaking just like you. In Acton, Maine, we have a black bear near my in-law's cabin with a den, less than a hundred yards away. I always carry a .45 if I'm alone up there with my daughter, just in case. Especially hiking. I really hope I never need it. Damn good story, Tom. One for the books!
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I tried making the piece funny, but at the time, I had never been so scared in all my life. It was a fear that froze me. I didn't know what to do. The only activity was my imagination.
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You kind of deserve this, not Karma for not being a vegetarian but for drinking Boxed Chablis! Also you get points off from this VW freak for spelling VolkswagEn with an "O" Great story. I found that I sped up my reading to see how it ends. Which is funny because I know how it ends because I have seen you, Judy and all of your children since the Bear incident! Once again, great story!
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I misspelled Volkswagen? Damn SpellCheck! Vas ist los?
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