A close encounter

Phillip and I went camping in Big Bend with Chris and Kristal last weekend. It was an awesome trip with beautiful desert scenery and gorgeous hikes. On one particular hike, Emory Peak, we were a mile from the top when Phillip, our fearless mountain goat of a leader, rounded the corner and stopped dead in his tracks because a mama bear and her two cubs were in the middle of our trail. Now, on the way up the mountain there are signs warning of bears in the area and they advise you how to react to such an encounter. Although, one never thinks they'll actually be "lucky" enough to see one, far less three. Phillip immediately said "give me the camera" and started approaching the bears and taking their pictures. Kristal, mother of two, grabs my arm, says "Let's get out of here!" and starts dragging me with her down the hill to get away. The only defense we had was Chris' knife and some rocks on the ground around us. The mother bear was obviously not happy with our presence and wasn't about to let us pass and climb to the peak, much to our chagrin, and began loping toward Phillip. I had a vision at that moment of my husband being clawed to death and myself becoming a widow with our unborn child. As my vision faded, I hear Phillip say "Ok, run!" and we all flew down the hill as fast as we could. I think we broke all the rules posted on the "In case you see a bear" sign. We unfortunately had to take a different path, which led us to a spectacular view where we took a nap and had a little food and then headed back on our way down the mountain.

Now, probably not many people get so lucky as to see bears twice on one hike, especially in Texas. However, it must have been our lucky day because on the hike back, now completely paranoid but armed with a plan should we run into more bears, we rounded another corner and heard some rumbling in the bushes. Phillip and I started making a bunch of noise to let what we hoped were just deer know we were coming. Sure enough, the bear family crossed the path not twenty feet in front of us and ran down a hill to our right, probably headed home to their cave for the night. This time we really got to see her size and how fast she could actually run. The moral of this story? Bears are really cool on T.V. and from the inside of a car.