With camping season knocking, I wanted to post this letter to MEC Calgary that my wife Tiffany wrote shortly after the May long weekend in 2016. Enjoy, and remember to be bear safe.
Dear MEC Calgary,
I wanted to write a message of thanks to both MEC and to Kevin Van Tighem for the exciting May long weekend my wife and I recently enjoyed. The thanks, I suppose, is for the knowledge and the preparation that equipped us for a grand adventure. An adventure we didn’t know we were embarking upon, but one we knew was sort-of inevitable given the amount of time we like to spend outside.
Over the course of the past five years, we’ve camped all over the place in our MEC Tarn 2. We’ve backpacked the Grand Canyon and the California Redwoods. We’ve been all through Kananaskis Country, up in the mountains and out in the prairies. We even spent a summer “camping” in our friends’ back yard! Rain, snow, sunshine and everything in-between; our little tent has often felt more like home to us than many of the places we’ve actually lived. It has never let us down.
This past May Long brought us to a well-populated and well-loved campground in K-Country with a group of our friends. There was music all around and the lonely sound of a generator all though the night. We’d stayed up late laughing and eating hot-dogs over the fire and I had planned on a good long lie-in before our hike up Elk Pass on Saturday morning.
It was the last place in the world I expected to have a bear encounter like the one we had. However, early Saturday morning I awoke to the sound of wet fur brushing against the side of the tent. I didn’t think much of it until the top of the tent started shrinking towards my face.
Keeping calm despite the shaking of the tent, something large and heavy falling towards me, and the sound of our tearing fly, I rolled towards my wife hoping not to be crushed and asked her quietly, “What is it? Do you know? Can you see?”…
Ashley had a clear view of the bear’s curious paw on top of the tent as he tried to climb our Tarn. She also saw him leave as soon as he realized the tent was not for climbing and that there were people in it.
We did not scream in panic, we did not try to scare the bear. We didn’t search madly for bear spray or a weapon of protection. In fact, we had what I thought was a ridiculously calm conversation in the midst of a moment that is the greatest fear of so many people I know. This, I think, kept us safe. I’m not sure, but maybe if we had scared him or hurt him in some way, it might have gone differently.
As it was, I was able to peek out and see our curious little friend munching grass not far away. We did get louder at this point and the bear ran into the trees.
The conservation officer later told us that the bear was caught in “a teachable moment” and given a bit of a spanking with a rubber bullet. She thanked us for not being the kind of people who panic.
Whatever the case, we were not terrified and neither was the bear. The Tarn that could not support his weight now has a 20” patch and a great story to tell.
I just keep thinking about differently it could have gone, or how differently I might have felt about it without the benefit of the talk that MEC hosted with Kevin van Tighem a year or so ago. Listening to some of his stories and ideas from his book, Bears Without Fear, has really changed the way I think in nature.
My wife and I have always been as bear safe as possible, but there have definitely been times when I took our safety for granted. I will never again leave the city and assume that we will not meet wild and / or dangerous animals. For this reason, I am thankful because MEC has put tools in our hands that have helped make my wife and me people who do not panic.
Happy Camping!
You can read more about our encounter, and Bear 162, at Rocky Mountain Outlook.