The following occurred July of 2015
So much for pancakes… I thought, staring further and further into space with each bite of my cold PB&J, gazing past the continually flowing wall of water that poured from the top of my shelter down to the mud at my feet.
I had been anticipating pancakes all day. It had become my go-to comfort camp food on the road, and having just left all my newly met companions in Yosemite Valley to start making my way out of the park, I especially wanted them. Sitting there at Porcupine Flats Campground, there wasn’t another human in sight. I was under a torrential downpour, and I had given my tarp to Yin and Charles, a couple I met that didn’t have a footprint for their tent (lies between the ground and tent as a moisture barrier and protective sheath). With a few snacks in tow, I decided to retire to my tent despite the early hour. A thundering like I had never heard before put me to sleep, happily.
Hours later after waking in the dark, I made food during a break in the storm and found myself back in my tent. My eyes caught something with the light of my headlamp, the way your eyes might catch lint floating in a sun-filled room. Just between where I sat and my tent screen door (mind you, not a very roomy space) was a tiny, white but nearly translucent spider. It had company, about a dozen brothers and sisters. I figured the more sizable spider I had smashed earlier must have been their momma!
Holy shit, I said to myself after turning my head for my headlamp to reveal another bundle of them. These were just as small but black.
These little bastards are everywhere!
I had discovered even more on my tent floor. Admittedly, I was creeped out.
This is just how camplife is, Moll…
I tried to reassure myself.
I’m sure by morning the majority of spiders left will be halfway through my digestive system.
Back to sleep. For about an hour.
Puzzled, groggy, and damp, I awoke to a strange sound. With the click of my headlamp, my light was met with beady little eyes.
Jesus! How did you get in here, you little fucker?!
A now startled raccoon stood between my tent screen and my rain fly. He had crawled under my rainfly (a tight squeeze normally but I assumed the wet ground made for an easier break in). In one swift moment of panic from seeing me, he frantically scurried around the space. This triggered me to panic as I tried to swat him closer to the outer walls of my rain cover. There was no frickin’ way I was opening my tent to try to shoo him or physically remove him. I could see the writing on that wall from back in Wisconsin. This little guy slipping under my rainfly while calm and collected was one thing, but him figuring out how he had even gotten in and how to get back out while panic ensued from both of us was an entirely different task altogether.
The moment seemed to last for quite a while,;I’m sure it did not. After he was finally out of there, I noticed the tears in my screen door. Good thing the little bastard didn’t use those opposable thumbs to unzip his way in!
A lot of excitement for one night.
The storm had been back and rumbling for a while. Fortunately, it put me right back to sleep. To my surprise, I hadn’t peed myself (to my knowledge) when I woke up in what I guessed was three inches of water.
Should I get out and go sleep in my car?
I’ll just get the seats soaked, which will get all musty in this weather, and I will have to deal with that tomorrow.
It was still really coming down, and with no end in sight, I figured with the majority of my body atop my makeshift sleeping pad and out of the water, I could power through the rest of the night.
(In hindsight, this was green. My concern should have been hypothermia, not comfort or mildew).
A prolific trampling abruptly woke me; not just the sound but the reverberation of the ground I lay on; the cold, sloshy three-inch puddle that was now my tent floor.
Be still, Molly. Just be still and be calm, my trembling inner voice instructed me.
I came to my senses in the eerie darkness as I noted what I realized must have been paw after paw striking the ground like a bulldozer to a dumpster.
It’s a bear…
I told myself as I attempted not to gasp loudly for air, realizing I had been depriving myself in an effort to breathe softly in the silence of the wilderness. The mysterious stampeding had ceased. It was replaced by a heavy, unpredictable, damp sounding breath, a resonant blowing noise. There was about a six-foot opening between my tent and the tarp I had hung to make a shelter in the downpour—to no avail, having to spend the entire evening in my tent unable to cook myself dinner. The bear was now within that six-foot gap.
I had brought a few granola bars into my tent to have for dinner given the inability to cook in the downpour. A very big no-no in Yosemite.
I ate those, right? Do I have deodorant or anything else scented in here?
Having relocated that day from the bustling Camp 4 campground to Porcupine Flats, the closest human must have been the equivalent of two city blocks away.
She knows I’m in here. She has to. If encountering a bear here, you’re supposed to yell and scare it away.Well, fuck that! I’m not trying to draw anymore attention to my vulnerable, precarious, shitting-my-pants predicament!
I could hear her moving farther and farther away…
That’s right, just go to the bear box. That’s where all the beef jerky is…
With care (but in hindsight without much intellect), I peeled the zipper on my rainfly just slightly to unveil what was to me a gigantic black bear about twelve feet away, at my bear box.
Okay. I’ll set my car alarm off. That will frighten her out of here without drawing attention to myself and chancing she gets pissed off in this general direction…
My car keys were in a mesh pocket on the sidewall of my tent.
Oh, shit, I thought to myself, looking at the bundled keys.
This metal ball of keys, a bottle opener, and a carabiner is the perfect mechanism for getting a bear’s attention, not the silent vessel I need to uncover the real distraction! For fuck’s sake…
My inner dialogue discouraged me from my grand plan, but only for a moment, and I soon uncovered the keys only to hear the bear continue on her way.
Thank fucking God. I really have to pee.
I thought, finally taking a gasp.
Well, this is it. This is apparently what I left the city for.
I left the cute, two-bedroom apartment I had all to myself (with running hot water, a bathtub, and even a TV for movies and Sunday football).
This is what I left civilization for… This is my life now.
