Mothers and Choppers and Bears, Oh My!

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — Animals aren’t stupid, especially when it comes to acquiring nourishment, which they seek with a singlemindedness matched only by adolescent boys’ pursuit of sex.

Until our furry friends acquire the ways and means to shop in grocery stores, the easiest way for them to get the calories they need is to stick close to creatures who do have the ways and means to shop in grocery stores, and hope that those creatures are so well fed that they get careless with their foodstuffs – which we invariably do.

That is why, during my visit to Yosemite last week, I saw less wildlife in the wilderness than I did in the bustling drive-in campground at Tuolumne Meadows. Specifically, I saw only a handful of marmots and ground squirrels in the backcountry but several deer and one adolescent bear in the front country.

The campground deer were particularly bold. One browsed within a car’s length of me. If I had proffered a wedge of lettuce, I believe it would have eaten out of my hand.

As for the bear: Though technically an American black bear, this one was a blonde. While packing up during the morning of our last day in the park, I heard the cry of “Bear!” and the clapping of hands. I saw a running ranger, followed by a troop of teenage boys and then, ahead of the pack, Blondie, loping along Loop A like he had a date with a short stack in Site A39.

***

The fiercest creature in the campground was the mother of an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old. It was just after dark. I was poking the fire to delay retreating to our tent, knowing that if I zipped myself in before 10, I’d be up at 3, waiting for the dawn. Then the shrieking began.

The mom, obviously suffering from family vacation fatigue, lit into her boisterous neighbors for keeping her and her darlings awake. She started reasonably, though forcefully, but quickly worked herself up into a foul-mouthed rage, before ending with the classic, “Don’t make me come over there.”

I imagined her babies being far more discomfited by Mom’s tirade than by the racket coming from the adjacent campsite, and was thinking that she had lost the moral high ground when she lost her cool. But when she finally fell silent, the campground burst into applause, whether in appreciation of the performance or approval of the message, I couldn’t say.

***

The Tuolumne Meadows backpackers camp is a tent city by night, ghost town by day as wave after wave of hikers uses it to transition into or out of the wilderness. The camp has water spigots and bathrooms, which would seem to make it more convenient than wilderness camping, which entails pumping creek water through a filter and performing one’s bodily functions en plein air.  

So densely packed are the tents in the backpackers camp, though, that it would be hard to pee on a tree out of a earshot of a fellow camper, who might not appreciate feeling like he’s sleeping in your bathroom. On a moonless night I veered wildly off the trail to the bathroom, even though I was using a flashlight. There was a panicky moment when I had no idea where I was and therefore no idea how to get to the bathroom or back to my tent and thought I’d be wandering in the dark until daybreak.  

Eventually I regained my bearings, but as I unzipped my tent the farcical thought crossed my mind that I was mistaken and would soon be pranged on the snout with a cast-iron pan by a camper who thought I was Blondie.

Better to camp where there are neither bears nor humans.

***

Naturally there were challengingly steep and rocky parts to our trek through the backcountry, but the only unhappy moments were when we had left the trail, seemed to be lost and had to descend from some high place that we needn’t have climbed. The rest was Yosemite’s glorious granite domes and irresistible swimming holes, the sounds of rushing water and wind in the trees and a total cessation of contact with TrumpWorld. Bliss.

On our last afternoon in the wild, we heard voices, were concerned that they might be distress calls, but couldn’t tell and couldn’t see where the sounds were coming from. Toward evening, when the upcanyon wind died, we heard the voices again, caught sight of tiny figures on a ledge far above us, then saw a helicopter whirl into the canyon.

The chopper dropped a rescuer onto the ledge, spun away, returned, reeled in the rescued and the rescuers, and flew off into the evening. 

So that is a thing that could happen. But it didn’t happen to us, so, sore-backed, sore-kneed and sore-hipped though we were, we emerged from our latest wilderness adventure crowing, “We can still do this!”