By David Simmons
NORCROSS, Ga. | I’m a member of an Appalachian Trail (AT) group on Facebook. Somebody started a thread asking for stories about the wildest, craziest thing that happened while on the AT. Here is what I wrote.
In 1990, northbound, somewhere in Massachusetts, on a long, slow left hand turn, I was headed around the side of a mountain. About 15 feet ahead of me on the right just slightly down hill, I hear a rustling in a tree.
I freeze. Down comes a black bear cub that scurries across the trail right in front of me, then scampers uphill. Uh oh! From out of sight, further downhill,I hear crashing noises, twigs and branches rattling, and oh my God! You ever hear a grown mama bear running through the forest?
Worse than that? Yes, she was coming straight at me with a deep-throated “Whugh, whugh, whugh!” grunt with every stride! Jesus Palomino!!! Here I was between a mama bear and her cub.
She was flying up the mountainside and crossed the trail about 10 feet in front of me, but somehow, she missed me. She kept on going uphill. Soon she was out of sight, chasing down her cub.
Long….slow….exhale.
I go totally Lucky Charms, thanked my Lucky Stars and was ready to take flight. Then a rustling noise comes from that same tree area! Another cub comes clambering down out of the tree to the trail, and this time, runs off….get this…downhill! Here I am again between a mama bear and another of her cubs. Again. Gulp!
Once again, I freeze. Then here come all those terrible noises. “Whugh, whugh, whugh.” It is Mama Bear again headed downhill, which is straight towards me, to chase down her other cub. And what do you know? Who is right in between? Me! Wrong place, wrong time.
I didn’t know what to say or think or do! It was too late for a prayer. All I wanted to do was to cower away and shrink into nothingness.
Then Mama bear flies across the trail in front of me so close I could have reached out with my walking stick and touched her.
But apparently I was not on her agenda. Her single- minded attention on running down her cub was so intense that she apparently not only did not see me, nor did she smell or sense my presence. I was very lucky that day. It easily could have been very different.
So as she disappeared downhill, I started running for all I was worth uphill.. But not for long because I had to stop and take a break for the call of nature. Cause you guessed it, that scared the you know what right out of me.
And thus another great memory, albeit a scary one, was made while on my quest to through-hike the Appalachian Trail. And onward I trudged, until I struggled and climbed to the peak of Mount Katahdin, the AT’s Northern Terminus on October 22, 1990.
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