Bears & The Blair Witch: My First Camping Fiasco

Let's make one thing clear before this story begins: I am softer than puppy shit, that's a hard fact. For a long time my thoughts on camping mirrored those of the great Jim Gaffigan. I know it's an eternity in today's world, but if you can bite down and get through the first 2-3 minutes of the linked video I think you'll get a laugh. And if you didn't (you didn't) here's the gist:

• "Hey want to burn a couple of vacation days sleeping on the ground outside?"

• Uh, no.

  • "What if I told you you get to crap standing up in the woods?"

    • I still wouldn't want to go.

    • "You wake up freezing and covered in a rash."

    • Okay I'll go

When I got to Virginia Tech I made the mistake of thinking it would be easy for a pizza faced Pittsburgher to make friends with a bunch of pastel laden frat bros from the south. Turns out I was mistaken, and after a few weeks those dweebs decided to extend what was unquestionably a pity invite on a camping trip. My guess was they fully anticipated me declining, and their instincts were mostly spot on. Unfortunately for them, the only thing that sounded worse to me than camping was spending another weekend playing video games while my creepy roommate ate his boogers and watched porn in front of me. They pretended to be excited and off we went.

The Appalachian Trail is a 2,200 mile hiking stretch from Maine to Georgia, a good chunk of which runs through the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The plan was to go 10 miles in on Saturday, camp overnight, then 10 miles out on Sunday. Just to drive home this point, my first camping experience was not at some campsite packed with families off the highway. We were 10 miles into the woods on foot. We did not see a single person on our way in. I realize that doesn't make me a bad ass in any capacity, I'm just illustrating the lack of bail-out opportunity if things were to go sideways.

The first day went according to plan. You're here for blood so I'll skip that part. The sun sets early in the fall so we found a little clearing in the late afternoon and settled in for a night of fire, hard liquor, and SpagettiO's (more on that later).

If I hadn't made it clear enough how woefully unprepared for this trip I was, here's a little more ammo. My backpack consisted of a sleeping bag, hoodie and a water bottle. I was forced to sleep in an 8 foot tent with not one, but TWO other guys, which I'm sure made them regret the pity invite even more than they already did. As the skinniest of the trio I was assigned the "bitch" spot in the middle, and my bunk-mates went off to sleep while I laid awake trying to control my boner.

Here's where you might expect a description of the eerie quiet that falls over a night in the wilderness miles from nowhere. Wrong. The woods are fucking LOUD at night. Most of the leaves had already fallen off the trees. That means highly audible footsteps, so you bet your ass every pack of deer sounded like the crew from Deliverance or Hills Have Eyes moving into position to have their way with me. Every time a branch broke, which was seemingly every 6 seconds, the Blair Witch moved closer. That last movie I had seen WAY too many times for comfort and could swear I heard faint voices in the distance. The phenomenon of hearing or seeing things when your mind is racing is very real to me. If you watch a scary movie, you're much more prone to hear "house sounds". That's just a fact. "Hey Shawn, if you're such a pussy, maybe don't watch so many scary movies." Point taken.

I dozed off for a bit, only to be woken up by 3-inch spider crawling on my face around 2am. I'm not overly scared of spiders, but the point is I was awake for what happened next. I began to hear something slowly moving towards the tent while my buddies were fully asleep. Quick reminder prior to the details: At least 3-4 packs of deer had run by the tent and I know what they sound like. They move mostly in packs and are very quick and light.

This was not that. Heavy step...*CRUNCH*.....10 second pause. Heavy step....*CRUNCH*.....10 second pause. Heavy step...*CRUNCH*....10 second pause.

As it grew nearer I heard a muffled growl/grunt unmistakably to that of a bear.

While we were smart enough to hang our trash 20+ feet in the air, I regrettably hadn't had the presence of mind to rinse off my SpagettiO covered hands. Quickly panicking and having to hide them somewhere, I slowly slid them down my pants (a weird thing to do while reciting the Hail Mary). It eventually pressed it's snout against the outer edge of our tent, so the only thing between our heads was a thin layer of nylon canvas. You wouldn't believe me if I used a cliche like "I could smell it's breath", but that's the proximity we're talking about here.

I'm writing this blog, so you know how things eventually played out. I managed to not evacuate my bowels, the bear snooped around a little bit more, and eventually moved on. I laid there the rest of the night wondering what would have happened had my buddies not been such sound sleepers. Maybe he would have eaten all our clothes but spared some condoms.

When I told everyone the story in the morning, the reactions were mostly limited to not believing me. That was somewhat frustrating until I realized that's exactly how I would have reacted. Young, stupid guys have an odd way of compartmentalizing those sorts of things. I remember coming home to a house I shared with 3 friends post-college, and they told me a homeless person had broken into the house and stole a bunch of shit the night before. Rather than process that horrifying information and live in fear, I chose to simply pretend it never happened.

As if the previous night's events weren't enough of a heart attack, we actually encountered more trouble on the way back to the car. The trail isn't always the the most obvious, as most of the markings are on trees and the leaves tend to cover up any well-trafficked walkways. It's easier than you would think to get lost if you're stupid, sleep-deprived and hungover. We ended up losing the trail and traversed the mountains for about 4 hours trying to get back on track. There were a couple tense moments, and I could see the panic setting in on the face of our default Sherpa when he realized we didn't have enough food for another night. We had planned to be back to the car by around 1-2pm, which ended up being about 5:30 as the sun was going down. Disaster (somewhat) avoided.

So that was that. These days, I actually love camping but the experience (and age) has left me much less tolerant of risk. Now it's much more about finding a spot away from the crowds but still accessible by car. Colorado provides an insane amount of options in that regard if you're willing to drive a couple hours. I've had too many back injuries to sleep on the ground anymore, but the Jeep makes for a fucking awesome bear-resistant fort. Plus, you can carry way more booze, food, yard games and weapons. If that makes me a coward, at least I've stayed on-brand.