IN TENTS EXPERIENCE

Have you ever been truly afraid? Was your fear legitimate or did it have something to do with a vivid imagination? We all suffer fears. Many fears are sold to us, good for big business, like a fear of not having enough insurance, enough money socked away for our children’s education or our retirement, or fear of being seen wearing the wrong brand of runners.
Have you ever been truly afraid? Was your fear legitimate or did it have something to runners.
Maybe you have felt fears that feel like deep terror, like if a plane spirals down out of control, or your vehicle plunges off of the road, or your in-laws show up at the door unexpectedly.
When it comes to horses, fear that feels like terror comes in a few packages. A runaway horse or a bucking bronc would surely send many riders into fits of horror. The deepest fear that struck my horse camp was in the camp itself, while the horses grazed peacefully in a nearby meadow, deep in Wilmore Wilderness of the Alberta Rockies.
Four of us were headed into some wild country beyond Grande Cache, Alberta. There was Joe, a capable grade nine student of mine, Shannon, a calm, good-natured gal who was quiet by nature, and Ronnie. Ron was about thirteen years old, the youngest son of a family whose other siblings had been in my class. His mom thought it would be a good experience, baptism by fire, throw him into the wilderness as a kid, and if he survived, he would emerge a man twenty-four days later.
But two things were immediately apparent. One was that Ron was ill equipped. In a few miles the sole of his cowboy boot began to flap like a dog’s tongue and he had no other shoes. Second was that Ron’s tongue also flapped constantly. He was a talker. As with many youths his conversation helped him keep his center of gravity. Shannon, being an understanding female, was soon the target of Ron’s need for motherly approval. I rode up front, far enough ahead to enjoy the peace and quiet and far enough to avoid eye contact with Shannon.
We rode for two days, up the Smoky River and over Dry canyon to Sheep creek. We were in wild country, and it was getting wilder by the minute. As expected, the odd bear track or scat marked the trail. A grizzly track in the mud gets a person thinking.
We made a nice camp at Sheep creek with a fourteen by sixteen-foot wall tent and planned to stay a few days. Things in the wild mountains are different than in civilization. The bigness of things, the isolation, and bear sign, all make it difficult to sleep until one adjusts. Those first few nights in the wilderness we often lose sleep trying to examine each little noise through a fear-filled microscope. Each little sound, we convince ourselves, is something scary about to shred us to pieces.
The fourth day out found us on foot with fishing rods in hand, dodging willow thickets enroute to Sheep creek. The willows thinned out and we found ourselves at the end of an old airstrip. We knew it was an airstrip because one side was lined with several old, metal, orange, cone markers about as high as my waist. But they were tossed about. “What’s all those holes in them.” Ron asked. The markers looked as if they had been shot to pieces with a shotgun, but I knew it was no gun. A Grizzly had shredded them like they were chewing gum tin foil, but the metal was as solid as the body of a ’56 Chevy. This was one powerful and mad bear.
We fished for a short time but spent most of our time looking over our shoulders and around thickets. Ron did not say much about the markers and Shannon never did say much about anything. Joe was neutral on most topics and probably spent as much time looking over his shoulder as I did.
Lack of sleep caught up with us that night and for the first time since our adventure began, I passed out with conviction. It was a short sleep. For those of you with adventurous lives there is a small part of you that wonders if one day the odds may catch up with you. Maybe you will get hurt riding, maybe in your canoe on a river, maybe falling, maybe by a bear, but you wonder if the odds will catch up with you. Even though I was in a deep sleep I believe that the bear sign had awakened these suspicions in my psyche. Mom always said, “Sooner or later you’ll get it out there.”
There was no tangible beginning. One moment it was a deep sleep and the next it was a complete and horrible conscious reality. The world had exploded. Screams, shrieks, bodies being slammed about and the stove, pipes, folding table, and pack boxes knocked about and into tent walls. But I was not touched. “God, I said to myself, please let me get to my knees.”
I awoke on my back, and to be effective I had to turn to my belly, pick up my gun laying beside me in one hand and my flashlight in the other. I took only a second, but it felt like forever. It felt like a miracle that I was actually able to turn to my belly and get to my knees with my gun in hand. I was frozen but knew I had to move. I had to touch the bear in the complete blackness before I could shoot. Moans and groans, shaking, and metal stove pipes banging about continued to fill the tent. And I could not shoot because it was completely black and no matter how hard my thumb pushed, the flashlight would not turn on! I moved out on my knees, pushing and poking the barrel of the gun, my finger tense and ready to fire, expecting at any second to shoot, hoping to shoot and terrified at the same moment. The greatest commotion came from the corner of the tent where Joe slept.
My thumb felt like it was going to break as it pushed against the big bump on the flashlight, and I could not believe I had not hit or been hit by the bear.
The air had a heavy, strange smell. Suddenly I realized that my thumb had been pushing against the square fridge magnet that was part of the old flashlight. In an instant I found the real button and the light came on. I still could not see! The bag of flour that had been sitting on the table had exploded and flour dust filled the air. Guttural moans with a blood curdling sound still came from Joe’s corner of the tent. The tent itself shook. As I made it to the corner two legs and feet were being drug out of the tent. I dove to the corner, went under the wall and out into the blackness of the night. What I saw was a greater shock than if I had seen a body being tore up and dragged away.
There was no bear. There was no blood. There was Ronnie groveling, moaning, and convulsing on the ground. It was as if a bear was mauling him but there was no bear! I went back into the tent. It was destroyed. Shannon was a tight ball at the bottom of her sleeping bag. I never saw someone curl up so tight in the bottom of a sleeping bag. She later said that she thought that she died. She literally thought her heart had beat itself to death and stopped in fright. It took a lot of coaxing to get them to move out of their fear.
Ronnie had completely enacted an entire and brutal mauling in his nightmare, complete with every realistic sound you could imagine. To this day I am convinced it is some small miracle that I did not find him at the end of my gun in the darkness when I surely would have shot him. It was only four days into a twenty-some day trip. The adventure had just begun!

The old wall tent where it all happened was innocent enough. Along Alberta’s Sheep Creek, tucked in a spruce thicket next to a small meadow. But the weather hit up in the high country – bitter freezing 10 below zero, blasting snow, in August!