Totem

In 2002, at a New College party, an unidentified girl walked up to me and asked, "I know this sounds like a weird question, but have you ever been attacked by a black bear?"
"Why yes," I said. "I guess you saw the video."

I am asked about this story so often I decided to write it down once and for all. For corroboration, feel free to contact the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or, if you happen to be in the area, see me in the Bear Safety video displayed in the Sugarlands Visitor Center near Gatlinburg.

In the last week of July 1995, I set out from Deep Creek campground for backcountry campsite #53, "Poke Patch" in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP). I slept poorly the night before I hiked out, unwisely experimenting with a camping hammock in unseasonable fifty degree weather. At dawn I swallowed a few ephedrine pills (another bad habit from college) and started walking. The day was pretty miserable, one of those all-day Smokies downpours where the raindrops are so massive that they feel like hail. I also lacked a decade's backpacking savvy, so my load was probably somewhere in the 50 or 60 pound range. By the time I got to #53, 16 miles in and up, I was wasted. I ate dinner, tied up my food bag (out of the reach of bears, of course), and went to sleep at 6:00.

At this point it's probably a good time to mention that at 19 I was absolutely terrified of bears. I dreaded the snuffling, snorting approack of an enormous creature that not fifty thousand years ago preyed on megafauna. One of the reasons I started backpacking in the first place was to confront the paralyzing terror, this childhood nightmare. The sniffing gets closer, and something, not quite a branch, definitely a nose, pushes in on the side of the tent.

At 8:00 PM I was still convinced that I was in the depths of a nightmare. This assumption was broken by a broad paw coming down, somewhat gently, on my face. The tent came down around me. Without seeing the animal, I could feel its jaws closing on my right bicep, then I felt myself being dragged and lifted through the air.

After what seemed like an eternity, I came to my wits. I yelled. Being a 19-year-old, I naturally slept with an enormous knife, with which I battered the blunt snout now mounted on my right side. Realizing that there was a living creature inside the tent, the bear withdrew. Sorry about that, it seemed to say. I thought you were a huge upholstered bag of Snickers.

For another subjective eternity, I balled into the fetal position in the remains of my tent, waiting to feel my flesh stripped from my back and buttocks. I made the decision to rise from my tent and check on the bear's activity (in actuality, it was probably only a few seconds since first contact). The adrenaline in my body had made it impossible to unclench my fists to work the tent zipper. Slitting the tent fabric with the blade of my knife, I stood up, and saw Ursus Americanus, fifteen feet away, standing on his hind legs.

The bear was reaching up toward my food bag, comically just out of reach of the animal's claws. "Scram!", I yelled. The bear regarded me, went back down on all fours, and made as if it intended to poke around for a while, utterly unimpressed with my presence. Not even a huff or a bluff charge from this one.

I did some thinking. Blood was dripping from my elbow and down my right side from the tooth puncture marks in my bicep. The animal was hungry, not terribly afraid of people, and a dozen feet away. It wasn't going anywhere. The road was 3.4 miles up the trail, uphill. There was still light. I decided to try for the road.

I backed from the bear, very slowly, until I reached the trail leading from the camp. I continued backing up for another few yards, then started jogging, barefoot, clad only in boxers and dried blood. The light began to fail. I began noticing that I had left the trail and was running in a creek bed. I had a little talk with myself. John, I said, people are not killed by bears. They are killed while running naked down creek beds in the middle of the night with a knife in their hands. I would not make the road.

I buried myself in a layer of rotting vegetation, remembering something about how it is warmer from the microbe action. It was actually quite a bit warmer. It was in the low forties and raining, but I've been colder in the mountains than I was that night. If it weren't for the fact that, in the back of my mind, I was still worried about being eaten alive. This won't kill me, I thought. Other people have done this. I can do this. It can't kill me.

I made it to the road the next day. Unsurprisingly, passing motorists did not stop for the mud-covered long haired naked guy waving a knife on the side of US 441 near Newfound Gap. I ditched the knife and got picked up by a trio of park maintenance workers, who took me to a ranger station. I filled out paperwork, ate an entire cherry pie, traded bear stories with the rangers, received seven different injections, and caused my parents to start smoking again. After a few days I was interviewed by a video crew.
"The last flesh wound we have from a bear in the park is from the early 80s," he said, "Mind if we interview you?"
"Sure," I said.

The morning I made the road was the finest morning of my entire life. I fell in love with a woman that day. Even now, when times become difficult, or when the pulse quickens, I can still feel the coarse hair pushing out from beneath my skin, claws gripping ground, muscles under sagging skin, as ground passes faster below me. With that bear I had found my totem.