Bear Stories

Last night I was in the woods. It was getting dark and I was stumbling through the thick brush, tripping with every third step. I could hear my own voice screaming repeatedly, “Andrea, Andrea…” No response. After covering what felt like many miles, I came to a small clearing and saw her. She was face down in the water, lifeless.

I was shaking with tears on my face when I woke. Clearly the dream was a flashback to my Boundary Waters trip, with a very freaky new ending. I texted Andrea this morning to make sure she was fine (I was still a little shaken) and her response was, “I would rather drown than be eaten by a bear…could have been worse.” I chuckled. Oh, the memories...

Andrea and I made our first trip to the BWCA last summer, which climaxed with us standing face to face with a black bear in our camp site. Actually, it went downhill from there, but that was definitely the most memorable part of the experience. For a hilarious play-by-play of our crazy adventure, jump over to Andrea’s blog www.midwestmaineac.blogspot.com/ and start with Boundary Waters, Day 1 (the story is told in five posts).

Funny enough, just as I was finishing my text exchange with Andrea this morning, a work friend stopped by my desk and happened to notice the small rubber black bear that sits by my computer (a gift from Andrea). She asked me if I was following Lily the Bear online.

I had no idea that a black bear from Ely, Minnesota (our BWCA entry point) is an Internet celebrity. Thousands of people are following Lily and her new cub through the web cam in their den, featured on the North American Bear Center’s website. They are even selling I ♥ Lily t-shirts!

I admit, Lily looks pretty cute on the web cam. She is part of the Bear Center's mission to provide balanced and factual information about bears. They state that "attacks are rare and excessive warnings about them create unnecessary fear."

We knew that before we went to the Boundary Waters. Andrea actually has a bear expert in her family who has studied black bears for years. When I mentioned my concern about bears before we went, Andrea assured me that there really was nothing to fear.

That knowledge was meaningless to us when the only thing separating us and an (estimated) 300-pound bear was a food bag. I have never felt that afraid in my life.

I wonder what would have happened if we wouldn't have fled to our canoe. Would the bear have simply ignored us and gone about the business of eating our food? Would he have run away? We weren't about to volunteer for that experiment.

In hindsight, it was an amazing experience seeing a wild bear that close, and watching Lily brings me back to that day on Disappointment Lake with a smile on my face. But still, I hope the web cam view is as close as I ever get to a bear again. The nightmares are real enough.