A Glibertarians Exclusive: Bear at Fortymile IV
September 7th
The day dawned bright and sunny, and I awoke feeling surprisingly good, considering how tired and sore I’d been when I went to sleep. I got up, dropped my tent, packed up my gear in the big frame pack, made the area tidy, made one last pot of coffee, and then doused my fire. Two or three hours and Wayne Johnson and his old Cessna would be back to pick me up. After a moment’s thought, I decided to leave the meat hanging in the trees until Wayne had landed; it would only take a short time to drop it, and I was sure Wayne would be glad to help carry it the short distance to the gravel bar. Instead, I just carried my pack down to the gravel bar and sat on a big boulder to enjoy the morning while I waited.
I was watching trout rising in the river, casting sparkles of sunshine across the water when the bear showed up again.
This time I heard him before I saw him. I didn’t know what it was at first; the gentle sound of the river and the slight breeze masked it, until a twig gave way under a paw, and I turned to see the bear standing on his hind legs, reaching for all he was worth for another bag of meat where it hung in the spruce.
I froze.
The bear grunted in frustration. He didn’t seem to notice me sitting there, only a few yards away. He stretched a little higher, reaching with one paw towards the bag.
Somewhere, in the distant recesses of my mind, I noticed another sound – a buzzing sound, growing slowly louder – but my mind blanked it out.
My hand stole down towards my camp axe, tied to the side of my pack where it leaned against my boulder. A totally uncharacteristic rage was building in me; this bear had already taken almost half my moose, and there he was again, just yards away, in broad daylight, trying to steal more.
My fingers found the axe and started undoing the lashings. The buzzing was growing louder, but I barely noticed it over the pounding of blood in my ears, the pounding anger building behind my eyes.
The axe came loose in my hand. The buzzing grew louder still. I ignored it.
The bear stretched, and reached; its paw brushed the meat bag, setting it swinging. He waggled his fat rump, getting ready for another try.
I couldn’t contain it any longer. With a wild, animal yell that seemed to come from somewhere else, I raised the axe over my head and charged straight at the bear. He dropped to all fours and spun to face me, eyes wide in surprise, just as I threw the axe with all my strength. The blunt side of the steel blade clonked him in the side of the head, and the axe clattered to the ground.
Stop, a distant voice told me, but I ignored it just as I ignored the distant buzzing, grown now to the sound of an airplane engine.
The grizzly huffed in surprise. He took one look at me, at the charging, screaming, enraged figure rushing straight at him – and turned and ran. I scooped up the axe as I passed the tree and chased him, over the slope and up the riverbank.
Later, after he’d landed, and after I’d come back down the river, exhausted, drained, dragging the axe behind me, Wayne Johnson told me about his approaching just in time to see a young but full-size grizzly burst from some streamside brush, fleeing for its life “as if the very Devil himself was after it,” chased by a crazy man waving a camp axe over this head. He laughed while he helped me get the meat out of the trees, and he laughed while we were loading it onto the plane; he chuckled on the entire flight back to Tok. He was still chuckling as we loaded my meat and gear onto the plane, and when we got to Tok, he insisted on taking me with him into town, to his favorite restaurant and bar, where he repeatedly told an admiring crowd the story, over and over – embellishing it here and there for effect, never failing to draw a roar of laughter. “Damndest thing I ever saw,” he kept repeating, “Damndest thing I ever saw.”
Finally, I was able to break away, after giving Wayne a handsome tip of cash and moose meat, to climb in my familiar old green Bronco and rattle away south, toward Soldotna and home.
A few days later, I fixed the moose antlers to a plaque and hung them up over the fireplace in my house. They’d serve as a remembrance of that trip, that adventure, like the other sets of antlers I had hung up – a few elk, a few deer, one pronghorn. Not trophies but touchstones to memory. I always knew, though, that what I’d always remember would be not that moose, but the bear.
The next spring, I went back up the Fortymile to the spot where I’d killed the moose, this time with a revolver of my own strapped to my belt, a big .44 Magnum – I’d learned that much. I camped for a few days, hiked, and caught fish. I saw some bear sign, and late in the afternoon of the last day, I saw a sow grizzly with two cubs, high on a slop a half-mile or so away, and I knew that the young male wasn’t likely to still be in the area. Somehow, I felt kind of bad about that, even though I knew it wasn’t me but probably that sow grizzly that chased him off.
Despite the stolen meat, despite the moments of fear, despite the sudden rage on that last day, despite all that had happened – or maybe because of it – I was sorry that he wasn’t in the area any longer. Somehow, I kind of missed him.
…. meanwhile the young male grizzly was slowly and determinedly tracking down where that plane landed and where that moose ended up. He had been publicly shamed — even chased from his territory by a single mom! Revenge against the demon that plagued him sustained him through the long, cold nights….
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If you couldn’t tell, enjoyed it as usual, Animal! Thanks.
Fantastic ending! Thank you Animal!
Animal chases off another animal. The irony is not lost on me…
Note: Next week you guys get a preview of coming attractions, and then after the New Year, something a little lengthier from The Crider Chronicles universe. I think you’ll like that one. Thanks for reading, all you wonderful nuts!
Yay! Thanks!
Great conclusion, I pictured the guy chasing the bear, though I did notice that the story was labelled ‘fiction’.
Thanks, Animal, always a fun read.
Not the ending I was expecting. 🙂
Ditto.
Great story.
thank you for the story
The bear knows not to fight a crazy person, I guess.
Good tale, Animal, thanks for these.
hot/crazy matrix?
STEVE SMITH WANT YOU TO KNOW HE WILL ALWAYS VECTOR INTO YOUR HOT/CRAZY MATRIX….
A neighbor lived across the valley from me, their home bordering the national forest.
One warm day the wife had the kitchen door open while she was doing the dishes. She heard something behind her and turned to see a bear that had wandered into the house. Before thinking she picked up a nearby broom and shouted, “GET. OUT. OF. MY. KITCHEN!” The bear knew better than to deal with a crazy lady so it turned tail and ran out of the house. After it was all over the woman realized what she had done and she sat down to have a case of the shakes.
she sat down to have a case of the shakes.
I was waiting for that moment in this story.
My wife didn’t believe me when I told her there was a bear hanging around the yard. Later when I wasn’t home she saw the bear, got a broom and went out on the deck, shouting and pounding her broom and the bear ran up a tree in the yard.
As a rule I’m not too concerned, until the bear becomes a nuisance around the bee hives.
Sorry for OT – about to go in to work. Didn’t see this specified in AM links: https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1734023843247690152
I’ve seen a few clips on Twitter. He got a great reception from the crowd, there was no violence, and after the rally his supporters grabbed brooms and trash bags and cleaned the streets. Encouraging start.
Great start! I hope he doesn’t end up getting steamrolled.
Bureaucidal maniac!
I feel sorry for all the useless bureaucrats that no longer have phoney-baloney jobs.
Can he be forced to reopen these departments by courts?
I’m sure the howling is epic.
Yes, the courts could demand he reinstate them. That will make the government look even worse. Kind of a lose-lose for the government at this point. And government union that takes violent action against him will also look like tools. He won with a sizable margin. There is little goodwill left for the marxists.
Things bad people say
2. “I don’t care how you feel.”
Having a blatant disregard for other people’s feelings is a sign of low emotional intelligence.
Displaying a lack of empathy for others, especially when they are going through a tough time, makes it hard to develop mutually beneficial, supportive relationships.
What to say instead: “I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling upset. How can I be helpful to you right now?”
Or you can just say “I’m sorry you’re such a thin skinned bitch. Get out of my office and do your job.”
“I’m not changing. This is who I am.”
Uh-oh, hate speech alert.
Yeah, they can fuck right the hell off with that one. “Be open to feedback” reads to me as right up there with “Don’t be defensive about your whiteness / maleness”.
I am a white male – how can you expect me to act as though I am not? This is the greatest get-out-of-jail card ever.
Yeah — context matters. In a bar / social setting? Sure… maybe show some empathy. If you’re just whining instead of getting work done? Don’t care. Get on with things already.
There’s a reason stoic getting on with tasks has been a social goal for generations, after all…. someone just has to buckle down and do the work most days — not be in a circle of therapy for their feelings.
I don’t feel like working today. I’m going to take a mental health day, and you must accommodate me.
Reaction may pretty much depend on what future relationship you expect with said person.
I had an employee quit after I told him he had to be on time for work.
My TAC officer at OCS suffered from low emotional intelligence but no one ever told him.
/Tired of doing pushups
One my fondest memories from the Army was terrorizing a sadistic NCO to the point that he put a no-contact order on me.
What a piece of shit he was. Just a useless, malingering sociopath through and through. Dumb as a box of rocks too.
I never noticed that emotions changed any event – whether that event was personally bad or good.
How you feel has no bearing on what you do.
This is the feminization of the culture – feels uber alles.
But… what if they are, in fact, wrong?
I literally know someone who is terrified of Lily. Her feelings ARE irrational.
Feelings by definition aren’t rational.
In the insane asylum, a psychologist insisted on telling me that I must let other people be right. I told her you don’t *let* people be right. They either are or they aren’t. At least when factual matters are concerned.
I wouldn’t say “I don’t *care* how you feel” because that’s just mean and unnecessary.
However, in certain situations it would be fair to point out that ultimately “it doesn’t matter how you feel”.
Fairytale solutions
Too much focus on ‘fairytale solutions’ at Cop28 climate talks, warn activists
——-
After 10 days of climate negotiations at Cop28 in Dubai, delegates now have just 48 hours to reach a meaningful agreement on phasing out the use of fossil fuels worldwide.
But while experts say nothing short of that will do when it comes to tackling the climate crisis, a large amount of space at the summit is dedicated to the promotion of so-called “technical solutions” to global heating – the idea that new discoveries could allow us to keep emissions in check while continuing to exploit oil and gas for power.
Proposals for such solutions include the construction of a giant shield that could reflect some of the Sun’s light back away from Earth, or technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) that tries to catch and contain emissions at the point the fossil fuels are burned.
Experts here in Dubai are alarmed by the number of booths dedicated to unscientific geoengineering solutions like the giant sunshield, saying testing these ideas is already wreaking havoc on vulnerable countries.
And despite there being no evidence yet that CCS technology can work on a large scale, negotiators from oil-producing countries are already talking about using it to “abate” or lessen the impact of fossil fuel burning, suggesting the final Cop28 deal should only target “unabated” fossil fuels.
Let’s focus on something serious and realistic, like magically fingersnapping fossil fuels out of existence.
If Dubai ain’t a lot like Hawaii I don’t want to go.
Stop it! I can’t stop laughing. Price of gas is down, guess I’ll go fill up.
Where are the farmers with their giant spray hoses full of manure? I have a job for them.
Now you know why the talks weren’t held in Paris or Brussels.
This is how you SPIN.
The indictment of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, on Thursday on nine charges over allegations of tax evasion undermines Donald Trump’s argument that he’s facing a “corrupt” two-tiered system of justice, according to an MSNBC legal analyst.
Lisa Rubin argued Hunter Biden’s second indictment “thoroughly deflates the Trumpian argument that there are two systems of justice and Donald Trump is the one disfavored by it” whilst discussing the case on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show.
Not filing taxes for years, and trying to claim hookers and blow as deductions (with full evidence) is exactly the same thing as being charged with 91 felonies for made up bullshit by prosecutors who ran on “getting” you.
Can you imagine a prosecutor being presented that evidence on Trump? “Stop, stop, I can only get so erect!”
I saw a video where a college girl was told that Don JR was prosecuted for tax evasion, and she was happy and said it just showed the rot of Trump.
When she found out it was Hunter, she said, “I’m not voting for Hunter, I’m voting for Joe”.
We’re not voting our way out of this.
That is what I fear. The alternatives are decidedly unappealing.
Also, given the all projection all of the time nature of proggies keep in mind that they keep saying Trump won’t leave office if he gets in.
What will happen if he does win handily? Will the foam at the mouth fanatics who are dead certain they are on the right side of history leave office?
Or will they be completely justified in their own minds of clamping down with martial law etc and refuse to vacate office?
Hmmmm…..
So far, our lefty losers have projected everything they do onto Trump. Ergo, it is very likely they will lock down offices and refuse to leave. Or stage some kind of revolution.
Or perhaps Ergot. The marxists are like a rot on otherwise nice things.
…or provoke/ initiate the Mother of All Wag the Dog scenarios.
Problem: You love to project an image as being a kind and welcoming progressive, but really just can’t deal with those immigrants coming to your city. What to do?
Pass a law requiring busses get prior approval to drop off passengers in your city. Deny this to immigrant busses, and sue those that have the audacity to transport people there anyway.
I think any of us here can reliably predict that the buses will next stop right outside city limits, drop everyone off, and the driver will just point the way.
Being a progressive is about signaling virtue, not actually having any. Geez NA, learn the rules.
Aren’t a lot of those buses now being paid for by Biden? They aren’t all sponsored by Texas and Florida. Texas merely hands out brochures suggesting destinations I think.
Great read Animal.
I had a panther sneak up on me once. Damn thing snuck up to 6 feet behind me and sat down. I never heard a sound. I turned around and SURPRISE! We just stared at each other for half of a minute, which seemed like an hour, and then he walked away. I didn’t have an axe to throw at him.
Things bad people say: I have a high emotional intelligence, that is how I know when someone is using feelings to manipulate me. Fuck that.
I had a boss that wanted to have a meeting every morning to talk about our feelings. 1st meeting: Him – “How do you feel today Suthenboy?” Me – “I feel like I am going to be late. A lot of people are counting on me. That includes cops, judges, doctors and most importantly patients. Y’all let me know this meeting turns out.” I never went back to one of those.
Looks like Milei is off to a good start. I fully expect him to trip and fall on a bullet.
Global warming….they are just going to keep that grift going, aren’t they? Doom is just around the next bend, just like it always has been.
As for Trump, what The Other Kevin said.
If called by a panther, don’t anther.
— Ogden Nash
I was not expecting the berzerker mode attack on the bear – of course neither was the bear.
Australia man fights off croc with frying pan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH6ySsqkopI
Also, good story. Reminded me of this:
***
After a dangerous but victimless encounter with a giant grizzly bear during a camping trip in 1984, North Bay, Ontario resident Troy Hurtubise is inspired to research the species up close.[2][3] A scrap-metal merchant, Hurtubise builds a space suit-like “grizzly-proof” suit of armour inspired by the film RoboCop, which he calls “Ursus Mark VI”.[2] The inventor works diligently to improve the $150,000 suit, continuously testing its resilience by subjecting himself to would-be injuries from moving automobiles and bar brawls.[3] He then forays into the Rockies to track down the grizzlies he dreams of meeting. Hurtubise ultimately leaves without repeating the bear encounter, which director Peter Lynch optimistically notes is the only way “the quest [can live] on.”[2]
***
In the original encounter, the bear knocked him down while they were both foraging in a dump- the bear for food and Troy for scrap metal. After he recovered, Troy pulled out two knives and yelled at the bear “you can knock me down, but I’ll shove these knives right up your ass.” At that, the bear ran away. Troy carried up to 10 knives at a time his whole life. Despite his quest for a rematch, he was burned to death in a car accident.