November 3

11-3

Just after midnight I was awakened by incredibly loud disturbances coming from the water 50 feet or so from my tent. It sounded like several people where sloshing back and forth along the shore – only there wasn’t a shore, and there weren’t any people. No voices. It was as if ghosts where playing a midnight game of hide and seek along a non-existent shoreline. When I cleared the spooks from my mind, it rather reminded me of snook or tarpon crashing after bait fish – but I knew there weren’t any snook in Florida panhandle waters -- too cold.

I got up to investigate, walked over to the edge of the bayou – it was high tide, and the water was almost flooding into my tent area. I hadn’t noticed any water marks on the ground when I had set up my tent, so I wasn’t too worried about getting washed out.

I turned on my Princeton Tec headlamp and tried to get a look at the water’s surface. Because the filament is an LED (it will run for up to 100 hours on two AA’s), it is not very bright at a distance, so I couldn’t really see what was making the commotion. And the crashing and splashing continued, oblivious to my light.

Within seconds of turning on my light, a spotlight flashed across the glade to my left, in the direction of the house! Crap! Security, I thought. I quickly shut the light off, moved behind some bushes, and waited. My heart pounding, I cursed at myself for being so stupid.

Nothing.

Just as I moved to go back in my tent, the spotlight flashed again in my direction! All sorts of thoughts were running rampant in my mind. Security? Police? Property owners who had called the police? Being in an unfamiliar area, and the ghostly sounds coming from the water, didn’t help my anxiety. I crawled back into my tent and lay still, peering out the front netting. Klondike lay there, too, watching. Good girl, I thought, you just lie there and be still – don’t try to be your usual friendly self. Pllleeeeease don’t be your usual friendly self.

For what seemed like an eternity, the light flashed on and off as it made its way through the winding bayou in my direction. As it got closer, the ruckus subsided in the water in front of me, and I began to hear faint sounds of paddles in water, thunking every once in a while against a fiberglass hull. Still, no voices. I began to wonder if it was just fishermen trying not to spook the fish I had been hearing.

When I had crossed the cable gate before sunset, I had noticed dunes on my right, across the road. Now from behind me, in that direction, there came a sound like a truck revving its engine and racing in the dunes. Boy, I thought, I sure picked a busy place to camp for the night. Dune races and stealthy anglers. My heart rate started to slow and a lay my head back down on my tiny pillow.

Just as I started to fall back to sleep, there was a rev, a SCREECH of a power steering belt slipping, and a truck crashed through the overgrown road just a few feet behind my tent! The truck stalled, started again, revved and quickly backed down the road, then went silent.

Moments later, the boat paddled past the open area where I was camped, and the spotlight fell right on my tent – they had found me! A “SHHHHH!” scampered across the water and the light went out. Another minute and they were past, and I flashed back to the “old days” in the Florida Keys – either these guys were practicing an unknown fishing technique, or I was right in the middle of a drug drop!

We live in a world where TV and media numb us to violence and death. While we eat dinner, we watch wars on CNN, for cryin’ out loud! I had also spent eight years walking into burning buildings. So it took a moment for the gravity of the situation to sink in: I was alone. There were at least three of them. No evidence is left by floating on water. And the truck might as well have been on the water, too, because the sand in the whole area was so soft, tire tracks quickly became indiscernible. And there were no witnesses. Why not put a couple of bullet holes in yonder tent and not have to worry if occupant of yonder tent had seen you. Oh, and what a beautiful dog.

As the scene played on just outside my tent, an unfamiliar form of terror began to seep into my bones, and gather in the pit of my stomach. A chill that was not of the air, wrapped itself around me, and gripped me in its embrace.

In the time I was on the fire department, I had fallen through one floor (luckily it was a trailer floor) pulling another firefighter out who had fallen through, too. I had had two roofs crash down around me, been electrocuted once and risked it countless other times, worked in lethal environments where one mistake would have ignited gasoline or propane explosions, and had been nozzle man when a house backdrafted at 5:10 one morning. In all of those moments, I had never felt so helpless and nearly frozen in terror as I did right then in my four-season, “bombproof” Mountain Hard Wear tent.

At this moment, my friend Robert Tree Cody came into my mind. Tree is a multi-award winning Native America flutist, educator and storyteller, with over 10 CD’s on the Canyon Records label. I had met him a year ago through a mutual colleague, Russ Freeman, and we instantly became best friends, or “brothers,” as he puts it. It was as if we had known each other for a thousand lifetimes, and we were now simply picking up where we had left off in the last one. I felt the same with his wife, too.

Tree is also a walking enigma – and a tall one, at that – he is six-foot ten-inches. One moment he is about as goofy as a fellow can get, the next he will speak to you in a tone that you best listen to. He has caller ID and one of his favorite ways to answer the phone when I called was, “Ahhhhh, oh Wise One, what brings you to call me? . . . Whas up! CHEWIE!” (my nickname). And then he would launch into one of his many Indian jokes.

Recently, when I told him I was not taking a cell phone along for the rest of the trip (partially) due to weight and the expense, he surprised me by expressing a concern for my safety. This was a first. Normally, he was the one who most understood why I was doing this – a “vision quest” as he called it, where one leaves everything behind and isolates himself from the world to “seek his own truth.”

“But what if you are out there and you get seriously hurt – how will anyone know?” he asked. I told him what I had told countless others when asked the same question, that I would be fine and that if I did get hurt, I would deal with that when it happened. I also told him that I needed to get back to the purity and simplicity of my original vision. He persisted as only Tree can do, “But think of a cell phone as a modern smoke signal – that’s how I think of mine – that’s pure enough, isn’t it?”

“Tree,” I said, respectfully. “I don’t want any distractions – I need to do this alone.”

“I understand,” he answered, softly.

Now, Tree was talking to me in my mind. He was repeating something he had said to me just before I left the Keys. (Then, I had told him that I was actually surprised, but I was a little scared of what was next.) He said in a low, commanding voice, “When you come to face that which you fear, let the Creator guide you.” Ahhhh, Tree and his good old Indian Shakespeare.

Oh, I was listening for guidance, all right. But I couldn’t hear it over my mind screaming a thousand options in my head. For instance, now that they had passed, should I get up and quietly slip into the brush, before they headed back out? Should I try to make my way out to the desolate highway and hope a car came by at that hour of the morning – supposing that anyone would actually stop for a six-foot-two lunatic in dirty shorts jumping up and down on the side of the road while his Siberian husky made some new friends. Should I just lie still and “play dead”?

As this went on for at least a half hour, I had plenty of time to think. I even thought back to some of the movies I had seen that had irritated me because the main character made stupid, illogical, decisions in the face of danger. I would sit in the theater, hissing in my date’s ear, “God, how could he/she be so STUPID! I would have NEVER done that.” And I was wondering now if this scene wasn’t playing on some cosmic theater screen in front of three oddly shaped creatures screaming in the darkness, “Run away, run away, run away!” or “Stay quiet, SHHHHH, stay quiet, you FOOL!” or worse yet, “Oops . . . he chose . . . poorly . . . ”

After what seemed like an eternity, I heard the boat being paddled back past my tent, this time much quieter and with no spotlight. It was the moment of truth . . . .

****

I awoke as the sun was beginning to light the dense fog that was now drifting around my tent and across the bayou. It was so thick I could actually see eddies of it wafting through the air. I had listened as the boat had paddled back out to open water. Then I heard the engine start and they roared off. They had paddled quite a ways in off the Gulf, but now that they were leaving, they didn’t seem to care if they made noise. About five minutes later, the truck started, and made its way back onto the road. I was surprised, but it only took me a few minutes to fall back to sleep.

K stayed asleep as I padded around my site, wiping the sleep from my eyes. I looked out onto the water from where the excitement had come earlier in the morning. It was as peaceful as it had been when I set up camp – no chaotic fish behavior and no evidence of nefarious characters doing questionable deeds in the night. It was like someone had taken a vacuum cleaner and sucked up the events.

I walked to the back of my tent to see how close the truck had come to hitting me, and noticed a large black shape barely visible through the fog, sitting along the tree line, about 100 feet away. I didn’t remember it being there last night – and it looked suspiciously like a bear.

I got my video camera out and zoomed in on it. Yep, it was a bear, all right – a full-grown black bear, sitting calmly, looking at me, then off into the bushes, then back at me again.

Well, this is interesting, I thought. In the back of my head I heard Steve the Crocodile Hunter saying, “Isn’t she a beauty!” Actually, she-he was beautiful. I had never been so close to a bear before – with nothing between us. And it was a wonderfully exhilarating feeling being totally alone, in the presence of such magnificence -- just the bear and me. I felt as if I were peeking into another world. I think I said something like, “Hi, how are you this morning? Thank you for sharing it with me.”

Then the reality of the situation set in, and this little voice said calmly, with a nervous quaver, “Um, Robert, that’s a real bear – you are not watching this on Discovery Channel with a bowl of popcorn in your lap.”

Now, I should mention, this “voice” was not the same one I hear that whispers guidance to me, like I wrote about on the main page of this site, and that I listen to as I walk. No, the voice that now spoke was that of a culture that is far removed from the understanding that all things are one – that nothing happens by chance – that there is a message in every event. That the world around us, from the tiniest molecule, to the largest galaxy, is part of a universal time piece that is experiencing man’s mortality – and the soul’s immortality. It was the voice of a culture that, as a majority, and perhaps in its greatest moment of error, believes itself to be superior to all things. A voice that refuses to stand and look at the wonders of the universe without pretext.

It was the voice of fear.

I couldn’t tell if it was a sow with cubs nearby – which could present a problem. So, I surveyed the area with my zoom lens, and checked up the trees – no cubs in sight. If she was a Momma, she was keeping her cubs hidden.

Still, I didn’t feel threatened by the bear. I remembered Snake and the medicine he had passed on to me and I knew Bear was telling me something, too. Bear is introspection – and introspection lies in the west, which was the direction I was headed. This made some sense, but I felt I was missing the bigger picture.

The bear stood up and turned its left side to me, letting me see its size. And the voice said, “ROBERT! You really should get going now!”

By this time, K was up and walking around and I began to break camp -- a little faster than I usually do. Oddly enough, she didn’t notice the bear.

As I busied myself, the bear disappeared, apparently bored with my show. I was a little saddened by this, but I also felt some relief.

About 15 minutes later, my guidance said, “Yo! Rob, you might want to check out the bushes to your left.” I did and the bear was back, peeking around a clump of brush that was closer than the last time I saw it – about 30 feet closer. About this time, I started trying to remember all of my bear trivia, facts and myths. Let’s see, how do you tell a black bear from a grizzly? Run up and kick it in the rear end, then climb a tree – if it follows you up the tree, it is a black bear, if it knocks the tree down, it is a grizzly!

Well, there was only one way out of where I was. Any other way was blocked by water or just led further into the brush. They say that the technique of playing dead with black bears is unproven. However, there were several proven facts: 1. You cannot out run a black bear. 2. You cannot out swim a black bear. 3. You cannot out climb a black bear. In his best-selling book A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson suggests running anyway. “It’ll give you something to do with the last seven seconds of your life,” he writes.

I tried another technique I hadn’t read about, but I am sure has been tried a few times. I stood straight, squared my shoulders and talked to the bear. “Now, there, Mr. Bear,” I said, “Or Mrs., it will serve neither of our purposes for you to investigate me any closer or come into my camp. Besides, I have a VERY ferocious Siberian husky that will defend me – at all costs. Now why don’t you run along.” Actually, I lied about the “all costs” part.

Then I started singing, The Bear Necessities. Yep, I sure did! And I know all the lyrics, too! I suppose that dowses the chance of getting a date with anyone of you lady readers? And I moved my walking stick, provided courtesy of the Pikes Peak Council Boy Scouts, within easy reach. I figured, since this was my first real bear encounter, I had better err on the side of caution – good Bear medicine or not. Since I couldn’t outrun, climb or swim it, maybe a good smack on the nose would make it change its mind if it decided to charge. If not, “it would give me something to do with the last seven seconds of MY life.”

I was almost ready to close my pack when I looked up in front of me, and there was the bear again. This time it was about 50 feet away, and it was standing on its hind legs, peering over a palmetto bush. It looked so funny (and dare I say, cute?) standing there, I laughed for a second, before I realized that this encounter just might be getting serious. I waved, “Hi there!” and grabbed Klondike and brought her around to stand beside me. I was hoping to let the bear see I, too, had size. And a nasty, fierce, Siberian husky – which promptly hit the end of her chain in much the same way she does when she sees another dog and WANTS TO GO PLAY WITH IT!

“You IDIOT,” I scolded K, “THIS IS NOT A TOY!” I looked back up, the bear stared at me for a second, then whipped around and went clambering into the brush.

I took the cue, closed up my pack, hoisted it onto my back as if it were a feather and strapped it on – almost as fast as I used to put air packs on in the fire department.

Just as I finished buckling my hip belt I looked up and the bear was BACK, but this time in its first position. I looked down to finish buckling up (I know, I know, “DON’T LOOK DOWN, you fool!”) and when I looked back, the bear was trying to climb the tree that was just behind it. This is good, I thought, until it slid back down and disappeared in the brush – and I ran my eyes all the way to the top of the tree to find, yep, a cub! I SWEAR I LOOKED AT THE TOP OF THAT TREE when I first saw the bear, and there was NO CUB IN IT!

Now, the fun part was yet to come. The tree where the cub was, well, treed, was only about 50 feet away from the overgrown road – the ONLY ROAD -- out of there! And Mamma was nowhere to be seen.

So I shifted the weight around on my back, grabbed K and marched right on out of there.

“. . . . forget about you worries and your strife! I mean the, beaaaaar necessities, or MOTHER NATURE’S RECIPES, that bring the bear necessities of life! Wherever I WANDER, WHEREVER I ROAM – I’m glad I’m heading, outa your big HOMMMMMMME!”

****

Due to time limitations, I must summarize the rest of the day.

I made it into East Point about noon and couldn’t find a place to camp there, either, due to the Seafood Festival in Apalachicola, which was about 8 miles away. On my way out of town, I filmed some marine biologists doing a fish survey near the road. Of course, K had to go play in the water, and cut her paw on an oyster shell. After performing emergency first aid on K on the side of the road, we made our way to the biologists’ main office. The director of the center, Steven Rider, looked at K’s paw and called his wife who is a vet. The prognosis was, K didn’t need stitches, but her paw would have to heal before we could continue. I called a friend of mine, Debbie Berry, who lives in Mississippi, and she offered to come to my rescue. I want to thank Debbie for going above and beyond to make a five hour plus drive to get me that night (we arrived back at her place about 6 a.m. the next day) and to my new friend, biologist Kevin Grant, who drove us to Mexico Beach where Deb picked us up. Cheers!