Spent a sleepless night in high winds that I thought was going to blow my hammock tent over, and which was also occupied imagining which sounds could be attributed to the wind and which could be the bear the owner told me had been seen at the campground. Every noise had to be wind or wildlife because no one else was camping that night. I finally decided that worrying about bears was silly, and the weather was only going to get worse, so as soon as there was enough light to see by, I hopped out of my tent.
I had told myself that the weather would even keep the bears from foraging, which was silly. I had told myself that a bear who realized there was a human nearby would beat a hasty retreat, which was just wrong. I told myself that with the average black bear being around 200 pounds, I actually had a better than average chance of matching the bear's weight, which would hopefully mean I would seem more like a threat than a meal, but bears don't study probability or statistics.
He wasn't too close, but he wasn't nearly far enough away. A braver person might have paced off the distance after the fact, but if I were that person, it wouldn't be my scariest camping story. I saw him, some yards down the edge of the pond, looking at me, and not looking like he was about to turn tail and run from the scary person. And why should he? He had to be at least 300 pounds. Against the advice of any guide to bear encounters, my first instinct, apart from screaming and running away, which I resisted, was to get a picture. Shaking and hurrying before he ran away, I dug into my bags for my camera. It was tricky because I was trying to keep one eye on the bear. Worse then him not sticking around for his photo shoot would be him leaving without my knowing where he had gone. Camera out, shaky picture taken. No checking to see if I got the shot (lousy shot. I'll try to post it.) because now I had gone from worrying that he might run away before I got my camera out to worrying over the fact that he did not seem inclined to run at all. I was standing on a picnic table to give myself extra height, in hopes that it would balance out the 100+ pounds the bear had on me. I said in my best bear-calming, I'm-in-control-and-certainly-not-about-to-wet-myself voice, "Okay, that's enough. It's time to move along." The bear had pretty much been still from the time I first saw him watching me, but once I spoke, he finally got his bulk in motion. At the sound of my voice, he started ambling in my direction. I still had the camera in hand, so I turned the flash on and took another picture, hoping that it would startle him enough to send him on his way. No, the flash just became one more curiosity to be investigated. Full-on panic mode, there was no where to retreat to, and the bear, while not acting aggressive, was definitely acting curious and completely intimidated. I clapped my hands together once, to make as loud of a noise as I could, and said, "Go!" I've only met one bear, so I'm no expert at interpreting bear body language, but he again/still failed to show any signs of concern that I might be any sort of threat to him. He did, however, stop moving forward. He seemed to be saying, "While I am in no way frightened, I grow bored of this, and will take myself elsewhere." He slowly turned towards the trees and walked out of sight.
I broke camp in record time in spite of constantly checking for the return of the bear. I had said I would stop by for coffee with the camp owner, but it was far too early, and my desire to linger had been chased away. I called a couple of hours down the road to say that I would not be stopping in, but thank you for the offer. She said be sure to tell your friends about us. I certainly will.
Close to the tree line, under the corner of the flag, is a vaguely bear-shaped blob. I'm sure there are special settings for low light conditions, but I'm sure I wasn't of a mind to explore camera features. And image stabilization can only do so much.