After a Long Day

After some deliberation and a few minutes of calming down, my dad and I decided to stay in our campsite that night under the logic that due to the bear's poor luck, he would leave us be. We hoped this was sound thinking. As it turned out, we weren't bothered again but that big ol' bear went straight for the food of the father and two sons who helped us, found no luck there, and finally made a feast of a food pack one campsite farther north from some extremely unlucky campers who he scared out of their campsite around midnight. They did have to canoe back to Sawbill Outfitters in the dark.

We decided to leave one day early not wanting to make a trip where all we did was set up and take down camp and battle bears of course. We figured we didn't really want to test our luck any further than it had already gone; we were unharmed and that was good enough. We told our story to the outfitters so that they would warn campers but got a lot of bunk from a tall dark-haired, skeptical owner of the place having something to do with lightning related deaths more likely than what we faced---as if he had any idea what it was like staring into the empty, hungry eyes of the bear in our campsite. All the same, other campers heard us, and the outfitters did issue bear warnings for anyone entering the Boundary Waters. But would it be enough for the next campers? Who knows.

As we were driving away from the outfitters that day, there, in the middle of the road was the second bear my dad and I had ever seen in the BWCA. But this one, of course, was small, fat, and absolutely terrified of humans . . . go figure.