Grandpa used to tell me, “Leave the wild animals in peace, Peter.”
He said it often enough that I knew what he meant without needing the rest explained. Keep your distance. Don’t feed them. Don’t interfere with whatever they’re doing unless you really have to.
Years later, standing at the edge of a ravine with my friend Scott, I remembered almost none of that. Or maybe I remembered it and chose to ignore it. That sounds more likely.
Looking back now, what we did was reckless. I wouldn’t do it again, and I sure wouldn’t recommend anybody else try it. At the time, Scott and I weren’t thinking that far ahead. We just wanted to help.
The whole thing started with a sound.
“What was that?” Scott asked.
We were setting up camp in the mountains. I stopped what I was doing and listened, but all I heard now was wind moving through the pines.
“Sounded like an animal,” I said.
Scott listened a few seconds longer, then went back to the tent. We finished pounding in the stakes, and when he stood up he brushed the dirt from his jeans and looked toward the trees.
“You mind looking for some wood? You’re better at that than me.”
I’d heard that before. “Oh, sure. You’re just afraid of what’s lurking in those bushes.”
He grinned. “I got your number, man.”
I headed off anyway. There was plenty of deadfall around, and before long I had a decent armload. On the way back I spotted one more thick piece near the trail and bent down to grab it.
When I straightened up, Scott came flying out of the brush yelling and waving his arms.
Every piece of wood I was carrying hit the ground.
Scott folded over laughing while I stood there with my hands on my knees, waiting for my pulse to slow down.
“You son of a bitch!” I yelled. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”
That only made him laugh harder. I started laughing too, eventually, but I still threw his hat into a tree.
“Now you know better than to touch my hat,” he said, reaching for it. “You’re gonna pay for that.”
“I already did. I just lost ten years off my life.”
Then the sound came again.
Neither of us laughed.
It carried across the valley louder this time, rough and drawn out, and there wasn’t much question what had made it.
Scott looked at me. “Bear.”
“Yeah.”
We listened until it came again.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s grab some stuff and go take a look.”
“Peter.”
I was already headed toward camp.
He caught up and grabbed my shoulder. “It’s a bear.”
“I know.”
“That usually means we go the other direction.”
“It sounds like something’s wrong.”
“That doesn’t mean we need to find out what.”
I told him I only wanted a quick look. Scott told me exactly what he thought of that idea while I started stuffing rope and climbing gear into my pack.
“You can stay here,” I said. “Get the fire going. I won’t be long.”
“Fat chance.”
He grabbed his own pack.
Scott and I grew up together. He’s older than me and has spent a good part of his life trying to keep me from doing stupid things. Sometimes he succeeds. This wasn’t going to be one of those times.
We followed the sound uphill through the trees. It came twice more while we climbed, and each time we could tell we were getting closer.
An old trail ran along the ridge, mostly grown over but still easier than pushing through the brush. We followed it until Scott reached the edge of a ravine and stopped so fast I nearly walked into him.
“Oh, damn.”
I stepped up beside him.
Across from us, maybe ten feet below the opposite rim, a grizzly cub paced along a narrow ledge. The cub would scramble at the rock, slide back down, cry out, and try again.
Mama was above him, pacing back and forth along the rim. Below the cub, the ravine dropped away.
Scott rubbed a hand across his face. “We have to do something.”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
That was the problem. Getting to the cub meant getting close to Mama, and getting close to Mama was a real bad idea.
We stood there for a while studying the ravine. Eventually I spotted a big boulder near the ledge and pointed toward it.
“Think you can get your rope around that?”
Scott followed my finger. “What are you thinking?”
“Throw your rope over there.”
“I really hate it when you say things like that.”
It took him a few tries, but he got the rope around the boulder and pulled it tight.
The plan, if it deserved the name, was to rappel down our side, cross the bottom of the ravine, then climb Scott’s rope to the cub. Once we reached him, we would lift him high enough for Mama to grab him from above.
Scott stared at me after I explained it.
“That’s your plan?”
“So far.”
“That is a terrible plan.”
“You got a better one?”
He didn’t.
We talked about taking the cub down with us instead, but neither of us liked the idea of carrying a screaming grizzly cub away from its mother. Scott rubbed both hands over his face and looked across the ravine again.
“Oh, hell.”
I waited.
“How do you talk me into this stuff?”
“I haven’t yet.”
He gave me a look. “Yeah, you have.”
We put on our gloves. I tied my rope around a tree on our side and dropped it into the ravine. Scott’s rope hung from the boulder across from us, and I went down first.
By the time we reached the bottom, the ledge looked a whole lot higher than it had from above. Scott tipped his head back and stared at it.
“You ready?”
“Yup.”
I grabbed the rope.
“Wait,” he said. “When you get up there, how are you keeping that cub busy while I climb?”
I hadn’t thought that far.
“You got any food?”
Scott dug through his pack and came out with a sleeve of saltines.
“Think he’ll eat these?”
“Are they stale like usual?”
He gave me a look.
“Should work.”
I tucked the crackers inside my shirt. “Too bad we don’t have a pic-a-nic basket.”
My Yogi Bear impression wasn’t good, but Scott almost smiled.
“Just don’t become a bear snack.”
I started climbing.
When I reached the ledge, I eased my head over it first. The cub was on the far side with his paws against the rock, looking up toward Mama. Then his nose went to work and he turned toward me.
I pulled myself onto the ledge and sat down.
He watched me while I fought with the sleeve of crackers. Gloves made the job harder than it needed to be, but I finally got a few broken and dropped the pieces into the dirt. The cub sniffed around, found them, and started licking them up.
I made another little trail. He followed it toward me, then wrapped himself around my leg. That part I hadn’t planned for.
He held on tight, trembling against me and making soft little sounds. I put a gloved hand against him and talked while I waited for Scott.
“Easy. It’s all right.” Maybe I was talking to myself too.
Scott eventually appeared below the ledge. I scattered a few more crackers so the cub would let go long enough for me to help pull Scott the rest of the way up. For a minute we sat there with Mama pacing above us and the cub eating stale saltines between us.
Scott looked over. “Now what?”
Now came the part neither of us had tested.
We got the cub between us and lifted.
He squirmed while Mama grunted above, and both of us stretched until our arms shook. We got him over our heads, but even with everything we had, we were still short of the upper ledge.
I looked at Scott. “I guess we should’ve tried this without the bear first.”
He rolled his eyes.
We put the cub back down and gave him a few more crackers while we tried to figure out what to do next. Tiny rocks started bouncing off our hats.
Mama was directly above us now.
Scott looked up. “Any more bright ideas?”
I had one. I’m not sure it qualified as bright.
“Can you boost me?”
Scott stared at me for a second, then took off his pack, dropped it near the wall, and got down on his hands and knees with the pack under him. “We better hurry.”
I picked up the cub. He wanted no part of this and twisted against me while I climbed onto Scott’s back and lifted him over my head.
More dirt came down.
Mama grunted somewhere above me, close enough now that I could hear her claws scratching against the ground near the edge.
Scott shifted underneath me.
“Can you give me a little more?”
“Oh, sure. Why not? I can do this all day.”
I moved my feet closer to his shoulders. He managed to get me another few inches, and I went up on my toes while the cub squirmed in my hands.
Then I heard Mama sniff just above me. The cub suddenly pushed down against my palms. For half a second I thought I was losing him.
Then he was gone.
I yanked my arms down and looked up in time to see part of Mama’s front leg disappear over the ledge with the cub.
“She got him.”
I came off Scott’s back, although landing would be giving me too much credit. I tripped over him, and both of us went down.
When I rolled onto my back, Mama Bear was looking over the ledge at us.
We didn’t stick around to discuss it. Scott and I scrambled toward the rock wall until the ledge hid us from her, then sat there listening to the grunting above us and the occasional little shower of dirt.
“You think she’s coming down here?” Scott asked.
“I really hope not.”
“Can we make it to the rope?”
“Before she gets here?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably not.”
So we stayed put. After a while the grunting moved farther away. A little later it moved farther still, and eventually we couldn’t hear her anymore.
Scott looked at me. “Is she leaving?”
“I think so.”
He leaned back against the rock. “We did good.”
I started laughing, mostly because we were still alive. “Let’s go watch them.”
Scott stared at me. “What?”
“Come on.”
For once he didn’t argue. He boosted me back to the top, and I reached down and helped pull him after me.
The bears were already moving away. Mama had the cub we’d just lifted to her, and another cub was with them too, one we hadn’t seen from across the ravine. The two little ones chased each other as they headed toward the trees.
Scott and I stood there watching.
At the treeline, Mama stopped and turned around. For a few seconds she looked back at us.
I raised my hand and waved. I don’t know why. Then she turned and followed the cubs into the woods.
Scott put a hand on my shoulder, and we stayed there a little longer.
Grandpa’s voice came back to me. “Leave the wild animals in peace, Peter.”
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