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Heart Of Darkness:Confronting Fear And Other Things in the Wilderness : Part 1

By Jenna Orkin

Last May my husband bought a tent. [This article was written before our divorce and believe it or not, had nothing to do with it.] Soon after, oddly-shaped packages started arriving in the mail: sleeping bags, a kerosene lamp, the parts for a stove. I didn't like the thought they conjured in my mind: Nick [names have been changed] was planning to take us camping. I said nothing. Then one evening he came home waving something as though he'd been dealt three aces. What he was actually holding were three tickets to Vancouver, dated the last day of school.

I'd never been camping. Camping scared me. I like animals but not in my bed. It wasn't raccoons or chipmunks that bothered me. I never heard of anyone being eaten by a raccoon. It was bears. After bears came wolves, ticks, snakes... It wasn't just animals, either. There was getting lost, driving off a mountain road... Then there was Miscellaneous - dangers I didn't know of yet but that wouldn't stop them from happening.

I've lived in New York most of my life. I'm pale, aspired in high school to be an intellectual and have been called neurotic by people who wanted me to do something I didn't want to do. They understate the case: I'm not neurotic; I'm a coward. I feel the world to be a minefield of hidden dangers waiting to snap up the unsuspecting. Fear, then, is my ally. In fact, I consider fear to be the great underrated emotion. It keeps rabbits away from predators and watchful humans away from dangerous situations like camping.

Thus I get no thrill from a risk conquered. I prefer a risk avoided. I didn't want to go camping. But our son Alex was excited about the trip and I wanted even less for him to go without me.

"Oh, come on," Nick said. "Everybody goes camping. What do you want to do - keep Alex in the hot, filthy city all summer? It's beautiful out there. There are all kinds of animals; nobody ever sees a bear. People go camping for years who want to see bears - the bears run away."

This may have been true but I suspected it was irrelevant. I, too, knew families who loved camping and returned without scars from bear attacks. But I knew Nick wouldn't want to do it the way they did. From the glint in his eye, the way he'd planned the trip for months without mentioning it, calling for catalogues and investing in gear for the serious camper - a device to sanitize mountain water, an assortment of knives each of which I imagined in his hand, stabbing a bear through the heart - I suspected that a tame family outing was not all he had in mind.

At the company Christmas party, one of Nick's colleagues had described his vacation in Alaska. It was beautiful, he had said.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't do what he did, all that tourist crap, camp sites, all that," Nick had said afterwards. "I'd go where there's nobody, just Nature."

The colleague had told us that it was possible to register with the Rangers and trek deep into the wilds on your own. If you didn't return within three days of the date you'd put down in the Visitors' book, they went looking for you.

"There's rafting, kayaks," Nick went on, dreamily.

Oh, God, I thought, Alex can't even swim.

"Alex could see the animals... " Nick had a faraway smile as he said this, with a hint of mischief at the corner.

And suppose the animals want a closer relationship than just being seen? I thought.

The more enthusiastic Nick became, the more I balked inside. My study of the obituary pages told me the death rate from accidents goes up during summer vacations: Sailing, climbing accidents... When people go to unfamiliar places and act as carefree as when they're home, dire things seemed to happen. But I didn't say anything; I knew that an argument would only tighten Nick's position.

For a month after that Christmas gathering, Nick had talked of Alaska. He brought home Jack London stories for Alex who was then eight. I hoped something would turn up to distract him from his new project.

Nick doesn't take life lightly. He works hard and he wants the other parts of his life to make his work worthwhile. He wants to have something to show for his time on earth: to see, do, all he can of what the world has to offer. To this end, he boldly goes where few men have gone before, voluntarily, anyway: He volunteered for the Air Force during the Vietnam War.

It was the highlight of his life. He was shot; he shot others. He earned medals which we find at the back of the closet whenever we move and which he gazes at lovingly before closing them again in their black cases. For years, whenever we made a new acquaintance, Nick found a way to mention his flying days in the First Division in Vietnam.

Every so often, now, he exercises those death-defying muscles, driving at thirty miles over the speed limit, or dashing across Fifty-Seventh street in the middle of the block in the middle of the day. At these times, I don't like myself or Alex to be with him.

Nothing did turn up to distract Nick from his latest obsession, his newest raison d'etre. Not even money; he had frequent flier miles: We were going to Alaska.

I threw a fit. I'd given in on where we lived, how our apartment was decorated, what we did on weekends, what we watched on T.V. With Alaska, I cashed in my chips. I sobbed.

"All right," Nick said. "I'll find something more family oriented; a little closer to home, maybe Vancouver, O.K?"

I nodded. The "closer to home" line was a joke - it isn't direct flights that save you from bears - but "family-oriented" meant he would consider staying at a campsite. How could I complain now?

"O.K."

For a month, nothing more was said. Nick flew to Tokyo on a trip that was too speculative to be considered business and I wondered if he'd used his frequent flier miles which would turn the camping-out-West idea back into a dream.

Then May arrived and with it, the unfamiliar, bulky packages and the tickets.

I decided to learn about camping. Not to get into the spirit of the thing but in the belief that this was the only way we would survive. Nick brought home two books to see what there was to do in the Vancouver area. I went straight to the index and looked up "Bears."

The books advised as follows:

If you meet a black bear walk backwards, waving your arms to show him you're not a deer. Speak in low tones. If he "displays signs of aggression" you should "look big" but not look him in the eye. Hit him on the snout with a long stick. If you meet a grizzly do the opposite: Play dead and cover your neck with your hands.

I interpreted this last instruction to mean that grizzlies were more aggressive than black bears and would probably attack; so protect your spine and hope you get off without paralysis.

The crucial question, it seemed at this point, was how to tell a black bear from a grizzly. Black bears are not always black. They can be brown or blond. I called the Rangers' station in Vancouver.

Black bears' snouts are shorter than grizzlies', the ranger said. Black bears do not have the skulking gait of grizzlies that comes from the protruding bone in the grizzlies' necks.

This was useful information if the bear was on all fours when you met him and didn't have his back to you. And that's assuming I could tell a long snout from a short one.

I asked the ranger how to keep bears away, especially while you're asleep.

"Keep a campfire going."

"How do you do that?"

But he wouldn't tell me. He had his own agenda of fears and forest fires ranked high on it. Forest fires popped onto my mental list of things to worry about.

"Nine times out of ten," the ranger assured me as he signed off, "they're more afraid of you than you are of them."

Perhaps as a concession to me, Nick also bought a book called First Aid in the Wilderness. There were headings for Frostbite, Rabies and Giardiasis, a word that had only recently entered my vocabulary but was becoming uncomfortably familiar. I learned to be suspicious of sparkling streams. Giving form to my fear of Miscellaneous, there were also references to mountain lions and coyotes. In a final flourish of realizing the reader's worst nightmare, the authors provided instructions on how to amputate your own leg. They sounded casual about it as though, if you were reading the section with more than passing interest, the leg was probably frozen so you didn't have to worry about the absence of anaesthesia.

All the books said that if you saw "traces of bear," - a clawed tree or bear skat, for instance - you should leave the area.

The last day of school arrived; we flew to Vancouver. We had been to the city before and I hadn't been impressed. But now as we rented a car and left Vancouver for the wilderness I looked back with longing. Its provincial sterility receded like a loved one I'd never see again.

For the next few days I was unusually indulgent of whims. If the others wanted to make a sidetrip - to any museum however dusty, any go-cart park however rusty, - I said, "Ooh yeah! Maybe they have a steam engine!" and, "Anyone want to race?" Alex couldn't believe I let him play all the arcade games he wanted. But each night that Nick got tired of driving and swung into the parking lot of a motel was one less night outdoors. Eventually, however, we were in the mountains.

Along the way to the campsite Nick had circled on the map as our destination, we stopped at restaurants and gas stations. At each, I debriefed people about bears. How many were there? Where? What time of day?

Some people mistook my avidity for a desire to see a bear. For I was like Captain Ahab in pursuit of a different animal. When I told them No, just the opposite, they said, "Don't worry. Nine times out of ten they're more afraid of you than you are of them." This implied that the frightened bear would behave as a frightened human being might and run away. But what I knew about animals said that that was not how they behaved when frightened.

Everyone had a bear story. One couple had stopped to help a baby bear that had been hit by a car. They were attacked by the mother. A ranger had seen two tourists who had covered their child's face with honey to attract a bear for pictures. They were at too low an altitude for bears; the experiment failed. (This ranger also said he'd known tourists to pick up a handful of snow with the idea of taking it home as a souvenir.) The cook in one of the restaurants we ate in had been attacked when he walked home in his cooking clothes.

And everyone had advice:

Throw something to distract the bear. Don't throw anything; you might annoy it. Climb a tree. Don't climb a tree; bears can climb trees. A waiter told us of his uncle who had climbed a tree, pursued by a bear. The bear climbed after him. The man leapt to the branch of a neighboring tree. The bear, seeing that he would break the branch if he followed the man, climbed down the first tree and up the second. The man leapt back to the first tree. Man and bear went back and forth until the man's brother showed up and shot the bear. The tree-climbing advice became academic since in the two weeks we were in Canada, I didn't see a tree I could climb. They were all flagpoles without branches for twenty feet. And the branches they did have were the frail ones of Christmas trees.

The advice continued: Wear bear bells. Bear bells are too gentle; carry a radio. Whistle. Don't whistle; you'll sound like a marmot, which bears hunt. Shout. Don't shout; you'll sound angry. Don't wear perfume. Don't wear fruity perfume. (Nobody explained what that was). Don't carry fruit or use perfumed soap; Don't use lip balm. Don't carry meat, salmon or tuna fish sandwiches. Don't get your period. Walk downwind so the bears can smell you and you don't surprise them. Walk upwind so the bears can't smell you.

"How do you know which way the wind is blowing?" I asked a ranger who was of the upwind persuasion.

"Look at the trees."

"They don't move."

"Generally the wind goes with the sun; up the mountain as the sun rises; down as it sets."

This was more useful but it, too, was academic since if you were downwind as you started your walk, you'd be upwind coming back.

Don't have a dog. Cook fifty yards from your camp and change your clothes before you go to bed.

One thing people did agree on was bear spray, a mace-like substance, so we shopped for some.

I'd never been in an outdoorsman's store. It was another reprieve from camping and I savored it. For fishermen there was leech yarn and shiny thread with tell-it-like-it-is names such as Worm Green and Cow Dung Olive. There was also Bucktail from Umpqua Feather Merchants and a book called The Art of Tying the Nymph. We bought two cans of bear spray and a bear bell each to wear around our necks like lepers and warn the bears away.

Outside, two women were talking as they headed for their car:

"Grandpa died. Then Grandma died. She wanted to be cremated. Afterwards they found Grandpa in the trunk of the car. She didn't want to go anywhere without him, I guess. Five or six years later. He'd been there the whole time."

I could almost get into this camping business if it weren't for the shadow of death hanging over us.

END OF PART ONE: To Be continued next month

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