Doug Goodman

For the first time, I took my family on an extended camping trip.  We spent three days and nights tenting in Mueller State Park outside of beautiful Colorado Springs.  Camping in Colorado Springs is a little different from camping in East Texas.  For starters, you can camp in Colorado Springs in the summer.  In East Texas you don't camp.  You just kind of sit around and sweat until the sun goes down.  There are a few other differences.  East Texas has most snakes that can kill you with a single bite:  rattlesnakes, water mocassins, copperheads, coral snakes, etc.  Colorado Srings has garden snakes.  To compensate for this lack in reptilian killing machines, Colorado has maintained its lion and bear population. 

Camping in Mueller, you are warned half a dozen times about the bears.  When to look for them, what to do if you see one, how not to startle one.  Sounds very quaint, like if you meet a bear it is likely to be sticking its paw in a tree while it digs for honey.  If you are lucky, it might even offer you some.  Then again, there are all the warnings:  Don't keep food in your tent.  Don't keep trash laying around the campsite.  If you cook in one pair of clothes, sleep in a different pair.  These warnings come on a sheet decorated with a bear who has sharp claws.  So gone is Mr. Honeybear.  Now we have Mr. I'm Gonna Eat Ya In Your Sleep Bear, who probably has anger management issues.

I don't worry about bears in Colorado any more than I worry about sharks in the Gulf.  Sure, they are out there, but that doesn't mean you're going to be some animal's dinner.  Still, there is a reason those instructions exist.  I figure it is mostly to keep bears from ever coming into Mueller.  I have watched television shows about bear relocations and things.  Somebody sees a bear somewhere, calls a bear expert (possibly with bear dogs) who tranqulize the bear and relocate it to another part of the Rockies.  Just to feel safe - kind of like keeping a lucky rabbit's foot with me - I kept a little 1-inch knife with me at all times.

You see where this is going, right?

We survived the first night without any bear encounters.  After cooking, cleaning, getting dressed, and dumping our trash in the bear-proof dumpster, we drove out to Pike's Peak.  My wife and children spent most of the drive up and down Pike's Peak clinging to the seats and praying that I did not send the van careening off the edge of the mountain with a bellow and a holler a la Goofy.  I returned them safely to a lower altitude, for which they bought me an "I Drove Up Pike's Peak" patch.  We returned to camp, ate, and went to sleep.  I was not as diligent the second night as I was the first.  I slept in the same clothes I was wearing when I cooked dinner. 

I slept very well that night, which we survived by not being mauled by a bear.  So the next day we went on a train ride (my son LOVES trains).  On the way to the train, my daughter informs me that she saw an elk on the side of the road about a mile back.  I got frustrated with her.  I had hoped to see an elk on our vacation, so I told her (probably too angrily) that she should tell us when she sees something, not a mile farther down the road.  We drive on.

Suddenly from the back of the van, my daughter shouts one word:  "BEAR!!!!"  But it is too late.  We rounded a bend and didn't see it.  What?  Are you kidding me?  I came all the way to Colorado, and I want to see the honey bear!  So I said "to hell with this," and I turned the car around.

And we saw the bear, right where my daughter said it would be:  on the farside of the rocks, ambling down the mountain side.  I didn't pull over and get a picture, and I didn't have time to study the animal.  But my first reaction was akin to most father's, I think.  There was no way that litle 1-inch blade of mine was going to do ANYTHING to protect me and my family from that bear.  I might as well be bringing a pop-gun to a pistol fight.  And "that bear," Mr. Honey Bear, had paws like a left tackle.  And as he moved down the mountain, giant muscles rippled in his shoulders.  This thing wasn't like the sun bears in the Houston Zoo.  This black bear looked like it could take care of a lot of business if it wanted to.

So guess what?  That final night, I took a few extra precautions.  Made a trip to the bear-proof dumpster before I went to bed (and wondered if my next tent should be made of the same stuff bear-proof dumpsters are made of).  Wore clean clothes to bed that night.  I remember I didn't get much sleep, either.  But I did keep that little useless knife with me.  It is amazing the things we do to feel better.  I guess what is important is not whether they can stop a black bear in its tracks (which in my mind had grown to the size of Kodiak), but rather whether or not it makes us feel safer. 

I can't wait to do some more camping in Colorado.