North by Scott Jurek

Author:Scott Jurek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2018-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

Mid-Atlantic

450 Miles

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

—Yoda, Star Wars

Chapter 9

Rocksylvania

Day Twenty

“You hear that?” I asked.

“What?”

JLu and I were headed to Hogwallow Gap, running the evening light away on one of the last stretches of Shenandoah National Park. Speedgoat had offered to shuttle Castle Black there, so we took the now-rare opportunity to run together. It had been days since we’d had trail time alone, and we were catching up and chatting so it wasn’t surprising she didn’t hear it. But I did. By day twenty, I’d already become attuned to the circle of wilderness that had evolved into my entire world. My Spidey sense was on alert.

“That growl,” I said. “Listen.”

JLu and I paused, listening closely this time. Nothing. Maybe I was wrong. We took a few strides ahead. And then the growl again echoed through the thick woods, louder, reverberating into our bones. I scanned the surroundings and quickly located our visitor on the left.

A huge black bear materialized from the forest’s natural camouflage. She had reared up on her hind legs and was about twenty feet away—a distance the bear could cover in only a few seconds if she chose to charge.

My first thought was cubs. I knew that if we were positioned between the bear and her cubs, we could be screwed. We might already be. Keeping my body mostly static, I swiveled my head around and searched for cubs in all directions—nothing. After that, JLu and I remained still. If we moved toward any cubs, we’d almost certainly provoke an attack.

But something eventually had to give. I took a breath, raised my arms, made my body look as big as I could, and hollered back at the standing bear. She looked to be about three hundred pounds and six feet tall, and she stayed up on her hind legs, glared at us, shook her head, and growled again, totally unfazed by me. A standoff.

I couldn’t help thinking of old Horty in that moment, even with the threat of death in the air. Horty loved talking to bears; he spoke to them as if they were humans. He’d holler at them as they were running off scared: “Hey, bear, get back here. Yeah, you! I said come back here!” Unfortunately, one time we were running together and came across a bear that seemed to understand English. Horty unloaded his typical threats and taunts and actually provoked the bear to turn back around and full-on chase after Horty and me. Sometimes I couldn’t believe he was still alive.

On the trail, I spoke to the bear again. Louder but calmer this time. I even took a step forward. Then I spotted two cubs. They were about fifty feet up a tree, just above their mama, only a few paces off the trail.

Now Mama went ballistic, roaring like mad and slamming her giant paw on the tree. It sounded like somebody was pounding the trunk with a baseball bat, and it seemed to be a clear warning for us to get the hell out of there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.