[pct-l] Sleeping with food

[Jeffrey Olson]

A regular contributor to the listserv said, "I would never consider 
sleeping with my food in bear country. I'm not a gambler. Not all bears 
are the same. If a bold and hungry bear that has become habituated to 
humans and their food happens to wander up from a vehicle accessible 
campground near your camp and smells your food, he might just go for it. 
People have been maimed and killed in those circumstances. Why take a 
chance?"
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Keep this perspective in mind.  You have to make a choice about sleeping 
with your food.  As I said earlier today, most people just sleep with it 
and don't worry about bears.  Let me share a story.

I was camped near Deception Pass in Washington and it was a very quiet 
night - no wind at all.  I always sleep with my food unless I'm with a 
friend who's more fear based than I.  We  have a couple ounces of 
bourbon and throw the rope tied to a rock over a tree limb and laugh.  
Part of the camping ritual.

I'm lying in my tent, right in the space between sleeping and being 
awake, when I hear some noises.  I'm immediately awake - my awareness 
straining to make out where the noise is coming from and what's making 
it.  My heart is pounding with adrenaline.  The hillside is fairly 
steep, and I can imagine a bear out there, slowly making his way towards 
my tent.

I listen so intensely I find myself floating out of the tent up the hill 
to a point 100' or so above me.  I have a vantage point, a perspective, 
that looks through the trees down on me in my tent and a bear grubbing 
75' or so up the trail from the tent.  He's just clawing a log, grunting 
and ripping it, and eating stuff out of it.

He glances at my tent every once in a while and returns to his feeding.  
This goes on for a minute or so - I'm guessing because I feel "out of 
time" - before I relax and my vantage point dissipates and I'm back in 
my tent.

I can still hear the bear - but he's moving away now - up the trail.  I 
lie there and a sense of peace envelopes me.  I'd been hiking for 35 
years then, and had always had a minor "FEAR" of bears.  It wasn't 
strong and it didn't determine how I acted. Nonetheless, they were 
always the "other" and hence I need to watch out for them - they were a 
threat of a kind.

What I realized and felt for the first time in my life was part of the 
larger wilderness reality.  The bear had no interest in me and my pillow 
of food.  I was part of his world and he monitored me - bear noses are 
incredibly acute.  I fit into the forest in a way I'd not before.  I had 
"place" in the wilderness.

I respect the power of bears, especially if I'm between a Mom and her 
cub.  However, I'm part of their world, and I don't fear them. I don't 
fear coyotes or wolves or mountain lions either.  We share the 
wilderness - and each has a place within it.

It's mice skittering across my face in the middle of the night when I'm 
cowboy camping that gets me.  But I realize I've put down my ground 
cloth in one of their "runs" or paths.

What's funny, is most night noises end up being deer or bighorn sheep 
licking up my urine...

Jeffrey Olson
Rapid City, SD