As I go back through my journal looking for inspiration, I realize that there are about ten different dog stories to tell. It seems as though the phrase "man's best friend" has no greater meaning than it does in the mountains. I will not tell the dog stories here, because I believe that they are far more interesting to me than they ever would be to any of you. And I'm still trying to make sense of the strange request one man made of us to "just run those effers over...you'd be doing me a favor!" when his mutts wouldn't get away from our car.
He must have been drunk.
Having a dog in the wilderness makes sense though, because there are other critters out there. Critters that have the strength (if not the will) to kill you. Dogs, in theory, keep the bears away.
As I share my stories with friends I am almost always asked if I saw any bears. The answer to this is, "Not Really". No wild and cantankorous ones anyway, the kind that will do anything to get your beef jerky. Other hikers warned us of where the bears might be, and I was sure that I would see one trapse down a hillside at least once, but I had no such luck. In fact the only bears we did see were in Yosemite Valley on the last day. A mama and her cub had gotten stuck in a meadow and became victims for the thousands of tourists and their flashbulbs.
I felt bad for them.
Truthfully, we should have been attacked. Why? Because my hiking partner purchased a little jar of honey to enjoy as desert each night. After a few days, the honey became caked on his beard and clothes, and a sticky conversation developed as he ate...
"Hey, do bears like honey?" He asked innocently.
"I'm not sure." I responded. "What is the jar shaped like?"
Funny, but I can't remember seeing the honey again after that!
(Apparantly this is not an unprecedented incident. I met another hiker on the trail who said he used to hike with a guy who would only eat honey and oats while backpacking. Apparantly they were visited by bears on a near nightly basis. Also, the hiker could neither confirm nor disconfirm that his friend was still among the living...food for thought!)
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