Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
I am really torn here. I do believe that the federal government should stick to the responsibilities enumerated in the Constitution. On August 25th, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the bureau in the Department of the Interior that would maintain national parks and monuments. And I know that Wilson was a horrible person who really did nothing right.
And yet, I love the national parks, particularly Yosemite. Not just for its beauty, though it is beautiful. When you round the corner into the valley and see Half Dome, El Capitan, the Falls… Just gorgeous. I have had many wonderful vacations there, and I love it.
But my favorite thing about Yosemite is that it’s where my three favorite bear stories took place. I realize other national parks have bears. Yellowstone does. The Smokies, obviously. Jellystone. But my three bear encounters happened at Yosemite – either to me or to someone I talked to soon after the experience.
So here are my three favorite bear stories.
When I was a kid in elementary school, our family pitched our tents in North Pines Campground in Yosemite Valley. My brother and I took a walk and saw a campsite where a couple dozen people in a semi-circle were watching something.
We joined them and saw a bear sitting by a cooler and a grocery box with its hind legs stretched out in front of it, coolly staring at the crowd staring at him. With one paw it clutched a box of graham crackers close. The other paw was reaching into the grocery box and pulling out a single cracker at a time. It was slowly noshing on them one by one.
This was long before social media, but if it had been around, this bear delicately nibbling would have gone viral, even if people assumed it was A.I.
The second story took place about twenty-five years later. I was a youth pastor in Felton, California, and I took a dozen high schoolers backpacking in Tuolumne Meadows. The students had single or two-person tents where they had been instructed repeatedly not to have food. The food was to be stored in a bag hanging high in a tree, out of easy reach for bears.
You will be shocked to learn that one of the students didn’t follow instructions. While she was enjoying an afternoon candy snack in her tent, she heard a noise and saw a bear’s nose pushing through the flap. She screamed, which startled the bear. It began to trot off.
That should have been the end of it, but a sophomore boy decided to grab his big hiking stick and chase the bear. We yelled at Andy to come back, but he kept running – until he realized he’d chased the bear into a cul-de-sac. It was Andy’s turn to run away. (I did return from the trip with all of my students.)
The third Yosemite bear story wasn’t one I personally witnessed, but it’s my favorite bear story of all time.
One summer when I was in junior high, my brother Daryl brought a Princeton Seminary classmate named Julie along. They were both part of ACMNP (A Christian Ministry in the National Parks) for the summer, working at the park during the week, and doing worship services on Sundays.
You need to understand that Julie had lived her entire life in New York City. She hadn’t learned to really drive until this trip, when she and Daryl drove from Princeton in New Jersey to Henry Cowell State Park near Santa Cruz, California. She hadn’t ever really been “out in nature,” so this summer was a crash course for her in many ways. My brother Dale and I tried to help by taking her on a nature hike and giving her completely inaccurate information. (Well, we didn’t lie about the poison oak. That would have been too mean.)
After her crash course, they headed to Yosemite, and this part of the story I didn’t see, but I heard it from Julie herself.
She and some of her friends had a day off, so someone got the idea of hiking up Half Dome. It’s not a short hike. After a while, Julie had had enough. She said the rest of the group could go on without her.
Julie found a good place to rest just off the trail. It was a nice spot where she could lean against a tree and nap. Even under the tree, it was sunny, so she put on some sunscreen – coconut oil sunscreen.
She drifted to sleep in the sunshine and quiet, but awoke suddenly when she felt a tongue licking her cheek. She was startled. The bear that had been licking her face was startled as well. It backed away and wandered off.
Julie needed some time to calm down, so after a lot of deep breathing, she remembered her friends had left her a brown paper bag with snacks. She pulled out an orange and began to peel it.
She hadn’t been peeling for long when the bear wandered back.
Julie looked down at her orange. She very carefully rolled it to the bear. The bear looked at the orange. It picked it up. And rolled it back to Julie.
Fortunately, the bear soon got bored and wandered off – leaving Julie with the best bear story ever.
So, while I’m fond of our national park system and am grateful for the memory of visits to many of them, the bears are one of the reasons Yosemite will always be my favorite.
My top five are:
- Yosemite
- Grand Canyon
- Arches
- Yellowstone
- Badlands
What are your favorite national parks? Is there a way for the national parks to make a successful transition to the private sector?
Discussion (24)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Hawaii volcanoes
Yellowstone
Yosemite
Kings canyon
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I have bear stories, but I can't top yours. Not even close.
I can't say I have a favorite national park. I do have some favorite memories of visits to national parks. And I am partial to the ones where our youngest son has been employed.
No, I can't see any successful path to privatization, but it's not for lack of thinking about the possibility. I do worry about the National Park Service reneging on the dual mandate of preservation and public access and enjoyment. The two are irreconcilable, so the best that can be done is to try to come up with a balance. The threat of privatization can perhaps be used to keep the NPS from reneging on its dual mandate.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Black bears are relatively plentiful in northern Minnesota. A co-worker of mine came back from a camping trip in far northern Minnesota about 30 years ago with the following tale.
My co-worker was with a group who were canoeing in the Boundary Waters up near the Minnesota-Ontario border. They stopped for the night, secured their canoes, and made dinner. After meal clean-up the cooler with all their food got strung up on a rope between two tall spruce trees. This was the recommended method to keep it from becoming bear-food.
Later on toward the end of that long summer day they heard rustling near the campsite. A bear was climbing the spruce tree which held one end of the rope which held their cooler. The bear climbed up the tree and slipped out onto the rope. Leaving the tree the bear grappled the rope and held on. The rope could not handle all that weight, broke, bringing down the cooler and bear. The great beast hit the ground with a rather pained snort. Grabbing their cooking utensils the campers closed in on the bear yelling and pounding on metal pots and pans. Unperturbed the bear just sat down, glanced their way and proceeded to rip into his hard won treasure chest.
The hungry group paddled back to a ranger station the next morning notifying the staff of a very human savvy bear. The rangers laughed and said any bruin that brazen was likely to get its hide hung up on a hunter's wall when the bear season started in early fall. I have no info on whether that happened or not.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Yosemite's #1. I'll have to think a while for #2, etc. My family went camping there a couple times when I was very young, but old enough to remember seeing the firefall. It was spectacular. As a teenager, I camped, hiked, backpacked, etc. all over the park. Then summers I worked for the U.S. Forest Service on a district adjacent to the park. We went to the valley on weekends, and sometimes our work took us into some back areas. As an adult I led and accompanied many Scout and church groups on trips to the park. From the late '80's until around 2000 my work took me to Yosemite regularly.
My best personal bear story was unusual in that I never actually saw the bear(s). But they were v-e-r-y close, I tell ya'.
This was in the high Sierras, oh, about 20 miles north of Yosemite. I had led a Scout troop to a little place called Waterhouse Lake, on the Stanislaus River. This was long ago, and far enough from the park that the bears were not accustomed to people. Extraordinary measures weren't necessary to protect your food. The scouts made some "Jiffy pop" popcorn, and unbeknownst to me just left the aluminum pan sitting on some mat manzanita nearby. Very nearby me, it turned out. In the middle of the night I was awaked by the strangest rattling sound, followed by a slight crunching sound and a single, low, soft, grunt. Then silence. This freaked out the kids, and we had a fire going the rest of the night.
In the morning light we could see what had happened by virtue of footprints in the decomposed granite. The Jiffy Pop pan was now a couple feet from my head. Some small bear footprints were easy to see around the pan. Then a single, really big print. A cub had been licking the pan, and Mom had arrived, probably sensed my movement, and called baby away.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Great stories!
My only one is a not bear story. Hiking in Kings Canyon, on our last day,we were in a ravine that channeled all the noise of the woods towards me and my friend. We had diligently hung up our food on a rope, but every movement of any animal seemed like a bear on its way to my friend, while I was mostly oblivious. My friend, in his fear (I guess), consumed our supply of Jack Daniels and Ron Bacardi.
We slept soundly -- I was not concerned about the noise, perhaps in ignorance or perhaps from my junior share of the alcohol. In the morning we found our stash of honey still in one of our packs just above our heads.
So no bears and my friend had a painful last day hike and I was happy he drank most of the booze. We were 23 years old.
You're seeing five of 24 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.