Man-cation DAY 1.5

The beauty of this wilderness is that you really are not in control when you enter into it. You are now a visitor to a dominion not your own. Consequently, it doesn’t take long out here to desire more permanent shelter and better comfort…to try to organize the environment to suit ME better. In the early morning, a pack of coyotes howls in the distance. The sound of their call echoes up the coves and reaches the elevation we were at. Then on the opposite hill, another pack answers. The pack below begins to howl again, but this time they seem to be disturbed and it sounds more like fighting amongst themselves. Or maybe they are tangling with another animal. Listening to the coyotes emphasizes this wilderness and sets the stage for what happened next.

Gary couldn’t sleep and kept unzipping his tent and zipping it back up. Almost every time he did this I woke up. At one point, I heard him unzip his tent, walk over to his backpack, fiddle around with something inside it and get back in his tent zipping it back up. About ten minutes later and before I was able to fall back to sleep, I hear a large animal enter our camp. It walks by our tent and brushes against it. It is breathing heavy and making a low grunting noise. It seems hungry and out of breath. It obviously has four legs as its steps seem too numerous to be a human. I hear it go to the area where Gary’s pack was laying and hear it rummaging through the pack all the while grunting and breathing heavy. I have never been close to a black bear and I was certain we had one in the camp. I had to take a peek. Feeling around in the darkness, I grab the headlamp. I sat up in the tent and got a good vantage point and aimed the lamp. Sliding the button over I am anxious to see the bear. But the light reflects off the black tent mesh and temporarily blinds me. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust but in the meantime, I can tell something large is out there and am trying to get my eyes to focus. When my pupils finally adjust and my eyes gain focus I struggle to make out the form of this large animal. As I make out the image, I realize it is Gary bent over his pack and I am shining my light on his posterior side. About this time he turns around and does a classic hand gesture at me. No bear this time I guess. I still can’t figure out what all the grunting and heavy breathing was about. I guess he was hungry.

We all slept in until 9:30 am. The sky was overcast with a blanket of clouds that looked like winter snow clouds. There was a nice chill in the air. We had packed in pre-prepared pancakes and syrup. Paul even found a way to bring a stick of real butter. In Columbia right now it was probably already 90 degrees. I smiled as I pulled on a sweatshirt and stood by the campfire to warm up. Drank about as much instant coffee (left over from old MRE’s) as I could stand. Today we are hiking to Shining Rock and maybe Cold Mountain if our legs are up to it.