There are No Bears in the Desert

Hello there, welcome back.  I would like to personally welcome you to a very special edition of the blog.  My first GUEST EDITORIAL!  This short story more than lives up to the high bar set by previous blog entries, so read it and enjoy.  

There are No Bears in the Desert

By Annie Naylor

Nick and I were in Moab this past weekend for our wedding anniversary. The plan was to do some biking, some hanging out at camp, and some general relaxing. We camped wayyy up in the La Sals in an incredible area, Warner Campground, which is about an hour’s drive from town on windy mountain roads. Much of the drive is on poorly maintained dirt and gravel surfaces and the forest is all open pastureland, so between the roads and the cows it’s slow going (but worth the journey). The campground is located in a large basin at about 9,400 feet, filled with the most beautiful aspen grove I’ve ever seen, surrounded by steep, bare mountain peaks and pine forest. The aspen had to be seventy feet tall and many had perfect white trunks that were almost too big to hug. They grew so thickly that you couldn’t walk through the grove without being able to touch two at any time, and tall brush filled in much of the space between trees. Deer were scattered through the campground and blended into the gently fluttering yellow, red and brown leaves. They did not appear to be afraid of us, but would stand completely still and wait for us to pass – at times, only identifiable by their soft, velvety ears that could be seen twitching through the brush.

And the best part -  with the exception of a few cows and the friendly deer, this beautiful oasis of a campground was almost completely empty.

Before I continue this story it is important to note that I have irrational, paralyzing and very creative fear of bears. This makes sleeping outside in a structure basically made of expensive tissue paper difficult, but as I knew there are few/no bears in the desert, I managed to make it through nights one and two at the campground .

Thought process: “There can’t be bears here, it’s the desert! (more on this later) Also, “Should I be worried we’re the only people here on a weekend of beautiful, mild September weather?”

So we’re camping at this beautiful, solitary, herbivorous-wildlife (as far as I know) filled campground in the La Sals, and we’ve been there two nights already. 

In the middle of the night on night three, our last night in the campground, I was finally drifting off and was jolted from this doze by what sounded like a very large, very alarmed animal crashing through the trees around our camp. First thought: BEAR. Second thought: BEAR. All thoughts were pretty much just BEARBEARBEAR, followed by a never-ending loop of the verbiage in the “Bear Safety” booklet that comes with every can of bear spray: “If a bear comes into your tent, THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE SITUATION.” (no further details) Appropriately, this loop played in the voice of Winona Ryder as the frantic mother in Stranger Things. But there are no bears in the the desert.

I scrambled for the bear spray can and was clutching it in both hands, laying stiff and silent in my sleeping bag, staring into the midnight darkness and expecting a moose/cow/enormous deer/bear, even though there are no bears in the desert, to make a moonlit appearance. I had no plan for what to do when something appeared. I lay still as a corpse, just practicing for what I might become, and I listened harder than I have ever listened to anything. There were more noises. These noises were not Nicholas snoring happily away. It sounded like something very large was wandering slowly through the underbrush. I was afraid to shine a light because OBVIOUSLY then the potential bear (definitely a bear; there are probably bears in the desert) would suddenly realize I was there and attack immediately.

I was trying to to breathe silently while simultaneously hyperventilating and trying not to vomit, which is SO HARD, and clenching the can of bear spray and thinking about the bear coming into our tent being the worst possible situation, and how fast and how far I would have to lunge to unzip the tent to get the bear spray nozzle out of it to be sprayed, and would it be worse if I sprayed bear spray in the tent or got eaten?, and how quickly a bear could charge once he realized he’d found the snack he was looking for (me), and that tents were so stupid and really just to keep bugs off and out of all the bugs I only care about spiders anyway so what’s the point even, and how badly I wanted to be inside any sort of solid structure at that very moment, and could I even get out of this sleeping bag quickly enough to save myself? (No. The answer to that last question is no. Solid minute of struggle.)

Over all of these thoughts going through my head was also this string, in my “I’m right about this” voice: “You’re being irrational. You KNOW you’re terrified of bears. You’re inventing this fictional bear because you were already scared and you heard a noise and you really, really don’t want to get eaten, and a mauling is also undesirable. You can’t wake Nicholas because he’ll think you’re totally ridiculous and that you do NOT have the emotional situation under control, which is true but you don’t want him to know that for no reason, because there are almost certainly zero bears in your camp. There aren’t even bears in the La Sals! It’s the desert!” This thought process was mostly drowned out by panicked Winona, but it was there. As the silence of the night drew on this rational part of my mind finally began to take over.

I was starting to wonder if “overactive imagination” is a treatable medical condition when the the noises returned.

There was soft snorting.

What sounded like a foot or paw scraping across the ground.

Could be a cow. Probably a cow.

More soft snorting, some tentative movement, then soft woofing.

ACTUAL WOOFING. BEARBEARBEAR. BEAR WOOFING. I AM NOW SURE THERE ARE BEARS IN THE DESERT.

It was the bear sound you learn from watching thousands of hours of PBS Nature. The sound that bears make when scavenging for food. I had nearly convinced myself this was not a bear. But it’s a bear. Oh my god it’s a bear, and it’s in or around my campground, and this is my camping nightmare and it’s happening and I’m in a bear snack pack and I have this bear spray can and it’s tiny and basically just seasoning.

I am now in high alert, barely-holding-it-together 9-1-1 mode. It’s the middle of the night. It’s mostly dark with the exception of a small sliver of moonlight that highlights a portion of the picnic table and the bushes behind it. I am straining to see into this sliver of light, to detect any tiny movement in the underbrush that might indicate a bear is about to come into my tent. Winona has become high pitched, breathy, is practically screaming in my mind and is crowding out all rational thought I’d grasped minutes ago. I am sitting ramrod straight, silently, tensely, all the way terrified, inside what is basically a bear tortilla, in an expensive tissue paper tent that is like some fancy cellophane wrapping for bear snacks, it’s the middle of the night, we’re alone in this horrible, scary, creepy godforsaken campground, Nick is STILL snoring, and I have just heard National Geographic, Nature, LIFE, legitimate bear sounds.

At this point I determined that chance of mauling was at or above 50% and I gently and lovingly woke my sleeping husband. If you ask him about this event he might use the words “hitting” or “shoving,” but we all express ourselves differently. He knew something was wrong. I somehow managed to get out a strangled word or two that expressed my deep concerns regarding movement and Nature bear sounds around the perimeter of our camp. I made sure to whisper so the bear currently exploring less than twenty feet away wouldn’t hear me and come eat us, because you know, at twenty feet away, a bear probably can’t hear you whispering… (this is an example of sarcasm).

Nick immediately grasped the seriousness of the situation and I was satisfied with his level of alarm.

Nick whispered “I have the bear knife.” I whispered “The bear knife won’t do anything.” For once he did not argue with this. Although impressive, the bear knife is best for hacking big pieces of wood into less big pieces of wood to make fires, which bears do not like but we did not have time for that.  Editors Note:  The bear knife has been 100% effective at keeping the Naylors safe up until now.  Until proven ineffective it will remain the go to resource for bear deterrence. -Nick

The bear spray had become a part of my hand. I whispered “How do you use this?” I had known how to use the bear spray before that moment when I actually may have needed to be able to use it. Luckily Nick remembered how to use the bear spray and which way it sprayed, which is important to know. We discussed briefly (in whispers – didn’t want the bear to hear our plans) and for some reason decided that despite my paralyzing terror, I should keep holding the bear spray. Looking back on this moment, I think Nick was allowing me to hold the bear spray because the commotion resulting from an attempt to pry it from my hands would have attracted the bear’s attention. “If a bear comes into your tent, THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE SITUATION.”

Discussion completed, we sat silently side by side in our bear tortillas, completely visible in clear cellophane and mentally preparing to be snacked upon. We listened for a long, long time. We heard only a few more sounds of movement. We couldn’t see anything. With every twig that cracked, or mouse that moved through the brush, both our heads whipped to identify the sound. There was no more soft woofing, no more snorting or grunts. Was it gone? The silence had been hanging in the air for what felt like an eternity before I trusted that we were no longer in immediate danger of becoming bear food.

Feeling VERY slight relief, I naturally proceeded to have a complete and total breakdown. I had never been so scared of wildlife and KNEW, just knew, that if we stayed, I would be a bear burrito. I did not want to be a bear burrito. The breakdown was messy. There were so many tears and so many boogers and I was still trying to be quiet and it was probably awful but I don’t really remember. I believe my exact words, when I finally squeezed some out, were “I DON’T WANNA CAMP ANYMOREEEE.”

Nick also did not want to camp anymore. I was satisfied by and agreed without reservation with his opinion.

When all seemed safe-ish we ejected ourselves from the tent and sprinted to the car to turn the high beams on our camp. Bears hate lights so this worked to keep the bear away. My lunge/unzip technique getting out of the tent was on point (good to know for later possible bear encounters). We literally tore everything down in two minutes. We frantically stuffed tent parts, sleeping bags, pads, and ourselves into the car and slammed the doors. We then proceeded to tear out of the campground at 50 miles per hour on washboarded dirt roads because the bear was probably chasing us and most likely could have ripped our car apart with it’s “bear” paws ( <- pun).

Once a safe distance was between us and the campground we were able to remove the bear spray from my cramped hand. The subie indicated it's dissatisfaction with the current speed/terrain combo and we gradually slowed. It’s hard to maintain panic when traveling at five miles per hour, and we regained our senses for the drive to Moab in the middle of the night, where with some difficulty we found an overpriced and mediocre hotel and were successfully not eaten by a bear.

It was only on the drive home later that afternoon I decided to do some “bears in the La Sals” research. I learned that bears DO like the desert and the La Sals have the highest concentration of black bears and elk in Utah.

OH MY GOD, IT WAS A BEAR.