Summer tales

My younger brother and I set off from the trail-head in Wawona which meandered five miles to the Mariposa Grove. We had arranged for our mom and dad to pick us up at the grove and drive us back to the cabin upon completion of our trek.

Wawona is an area of Yosemite National Park where my family used to stay virtually every summer from my adolescence to young adulthood. It's a beautiful, small, mountainous, peaceful escape from the spectacular yet often overcrowded Yosemite valley. Mariposa Grove is a patch of forest in the Sierra Nevada range which holds the great sequoia trees; some of the largest and oldest living things on earth.

Midway through our hike, which had been beautiful yet somewhat uneventful until that point, a scattering sound broke the silence of the forest and halted us in our tracks. Scampering up a tree some twenty yards to our right was a young bear cub. I can still hear our hiking boots fall silent as we met eyes with that little critter clinging to the bark and sizing us up in ears-back fashion.

I've always been fascinated with bears. They're part of my predator pantheon of animals which I love and fear -- bears, sharks, the big cats, crocs, and perhaps even the occasional cape buffalo (though not a predator).

One thing I had always read was that, with regard to bears, the worst possible scenario for one in the woods was to encounter a cub. Cubs meant big, protective momma.

After my initial wonderment and amusement with the little cub, my mind immediately turned to big, protective momma. Where was she?

Throw rocks. Make noise. I had always read this too.

I threw rocks and made noise, as did my brother. And herein lies the rub. To this day I am heckled for a boisterous laugh I concocted during that moment to effect the "noise." It was unnatural, loud and reverberated through the deep forest like a barking dog in a church. I've never lived it down and it has almost become family lore.

We never saw big, protective momma and I'm convinced that my boisterous laugh is the reason why.

Somewhere, in the dense woods, a dominant, confident guffaw went forth. Large, savage and carnivorous beasts fled from that subduing sound.

This was the summer that I was king of the forest (though some might argue that I was the joker).