Bears? What bears?

“Sure, sounds like fun.”

I couldn’t believe my ears: Joanne was agreeing to go camping with me again! I quickly looked from her to the glass of wine in front of her. Nope, only half the glass gone, so it wasn’t the wine talking!

Several years ago, I had talked Joanne into going up north with me and all of our kids for a week, and it took some convincing, believe me. The summer before that, we had taken her son Liam with us and he had had a great time. There was one minor incident when I found out on our second day that Liam had brought a stockpile of candy and other snacks with him and hidden it in the tent under his pillow. Once I explained that unless he wanted a bear crawling into his sleeping bag with him one night the junk food was best left in the car, he gave it up without a fight. We actually managed to see a number of bears that trip, which all the kids found very exciting and it was this that made convincing Joanne difficult the following year.

Joanne doesn’t do bears. Actually, Joanne had never been camping before but for her the possibility of bears being around was a big check mark in the “why not to go camping” column! It took some doing but I eventually managed to convince her that the pictures Liam showed her were really very deceiving and we weren’t really that close to the bears in them, and really, his life was never actually in any danger. I also told her an itsy bitsy lie. I explained that all the bears we had seen were ones we’d gone looking for…at the dump, down old logging roads, picking blueberries, etc. Now, this was all true, but I also told Joanne that in the 25 years or so that I had been camping in that park, I had never seen a bear within the campground itself! Honest!

Now taken at face value, this statement was completely true. I have never actually seen a bear in the campground. Do I know that they are around? Of course I do. I’ve seen tracks many times, I’ve seen paw and nose prints on a fellow camper’s trailer window, and I’ve seen what they’ve done to the garbage bins on occasion. But I’d never seen a bear in the park. It wasn’t so much a lie as it was a failure to disclose all pertinent information.

Joanne eventually agreed to come, so early one Saturday morning in August we headed up with her three kids, and my two. Her son and mine had their own tent, and she and I and the three girls all shared mine. It was a little cozy, but it worked. For someone who had never done it before, Joanne turned out to a great camper! She was cooking over the campfire; we went fishing, hiking, and were generally having a really great time. And then it happened.

It was our last day in the park and we had all just sat down at the picnic table to eat dinner. Suddenly we heard a commotion through the trees behind our site. I recognized the voice that was doing the yelling as Jean-Claude, a friend of my parent’s, and I knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t good, but as no one else at the table seemed to realize it, I kept it to myself. I said I had to walk over to the washroom, but quickly ran over to Jean-Claude’s site instead, to find him in the middle of the road and very upset.

Just about the time that we had sat down to eat dinner, a Moose with two Calves had come walking down the middle of the gravel road in front of Jean-Claude’s site. This in itself was bizarre at five o’clock in the afternoon. What made it even more so, was that just as he noticed the moose apparently coming to visit, a bear came tearing out of the trees at the side of road and took out one of the calves! Naturally, Mama Moose went nuts and the yelling we’d heard had been Jean trying to shoo her back into the bush before she hurt herself or someone else. All of the commotion had temporarily scared the bear away as well and we walked into the bush to see if the calf was still alive. It wasn’t.

We were both a little shaken as Jean-Claude headed for his truck to go inform the Park staff what had happened. As I headed back to my own site, I begged him not to tell Joanne or the kids, as I was afraid Joanne would freak out.

As it turned out, I was of course wasting my breath. Before we had even gotten the dishes done, word of the bear attack had spread and the kids had heard about it. Naturally, they couldn’t wait to come and tell Joanne and I all about it. Joanne didn’t freak out. She didn’t say much of anything, and we kept the kids close for the rest of the evening. Later when the kids were in bed, Joanne and I sat around the campfire and I realized that she was jumping at every rustle in the bush so I went and opened a bottle of wine and poured us both a glass. I tried to explain just how bizarre the whole incident was. As I filled our glasses for the second time, I did my best to calm her fears by telling her that that bear was long gone. That the Rangers had come and taken away the baby moose so there was absolutely no reason for the bear to come back. This seemed to work and Joanne began finally to relax a little. Just then we saw headlights coming up the road and seconds later the Ranger’s truck went by towing a bear trap behind it, which they proceeded to set up in the woods behind our site.

“I hate you” Joanne said to me as we watched the truck drive away again. I knew she didn’t really mean it, but I wasn’t about to argue the point with her.

“Okay” I said, “this is what they’re doing. They’ve put the dead calf in the trap to use as bait. The trap door is spring loaded so when the bear crawls in, the door will slam shut and they’ve got him. Tomorrow morning they will come back and get the trap and drive it somewhere far from the campground and let him go.” We sat in silence for about a half hour or so when there was suddenly a loud bang that shook the pine trees! We went to bed. The next morning we took the kids over to see the bear before he got carted away and even Jo had to admit that he was kind of cute.

So. You can understand why I was a little surprised when she agreed to go again!

This trip was a girl’s only weekend camping getaway. No kids. No husbands. And of the four of us, Jo was the second most seasoned camper having gone once before. Jacquie was actually the first on board though. I have probably asked her about going camping with me every summer for the past 15 years and she has always just laughed at me. This year she said yes. I have no idea why, but I quickly made plans before she had a chance to change her mind. Jacquie asked Joanne, and Barb took no convincing at all. Even though she’s never done it before, she was eager to try. We took two tents, a few clothes and some food and wine. It was an easy drive up there and we had our campsite set up in no time. An early dinner cooked over the fire and we were all set to enjoy the evening sitting around our campfire.

The campers behind us through the trees had been noisy since we’d arrived. We couldn’t see much of them but from what we heard there were at least two women, a couple of men and several small children. The noise consisted of music playing and kids yelling and occasionally crying…nothing you can’t deal with at 9 o’clock at night. At 11 o’clock it’s a little more annoying. I think we went to bed around midnight and just as we settled in for the night, it seemed like all hell broke loose behind us. Suddenly the music that had been playing all day (the same CD over and over again) was cranked. Next, another stereo tried to compete playing heavy metal. The kids kept crying and yelling for the adults to be quiet. The rangers did come by and tell them to turn it off, which they did, but this peace lasted exactly as long as it took the rangers to drive out of sight. Both stereos were cranked again and their conversation became yelling so that they could hear themselves over their own din. Just as I was debating whether or not to get up and go find the Rangers again, an argument apparently broke out and spilled over through the trees into our campsite…right outside our tent window to be exact. This was a little scary, and given how drunk they appeared to be, we decided it might be better just to stay where we were and hope they went away soon!

The music eventually stopped around 2:30 in the morning, although they kept talking most of the night. The next morning when we got up around 8 am, all was quiet in their site. The kids all seemed to be up and making their own breakfast, but the adults were all apparently still out cold in their tents. Naturally, I made as much noise as humanly possible while I made coffee and got the breakfast dishes out. Yes, I know, it was childish, but it made me feel better. Shortly after, they packed up and left. I don’t know if they were told to leave or not, but I like to think so.

The rest of the weekend was great. We spent most of the day Saturday at the beach, coming back to play cards, and cook a late dinner around 8 o’clock. We laughed. A lot. And I was reminded again why these women are my friends, and have been for the last fifteen years. Much later that night, we went down to the beach again for a midnight swim. Not all of us wore our bathing suits, but I promised I wouldn’t mention that part and I’m nothing if not true to my word.

Can’t wait for next year!