Doug Bruns

Archive for the ‘Camping’ Category

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“…and bears, oh my!”

In Camping, Nature on June 6, 2022 at 4:15 pm
Hello, cutie-pie. (Not my photo.)

We’re spending the summer volunteering at a state park. A lot of folks are unaware that Maryland extends west to the Appalachian plateau. Properly speaking, Garrett County, were we’re living this summer, lies in the Allegheny Mountains, which form the western flank of the Appalachian Mountain Range. They’re called mountains. Frankly, they’re more hills, lovely hills, but hills, nonetheless. You’ll find us here, nestled in these lovely hills, banked against a lovely lake, living in our lovely Airstream, under a thick canopy of lovely oaks , beech, and maples. My feeders are regularly visited by a host of neighbors, goldfinches, nuthatches, ruby-throated humming birds, a variety of woodpeckers, and titmice. The traveling warblers are moving on now but the last few weeks have been tremendous, warbler song filling every nook and cranny of the woods. 

Life under the awning.

Birds aren’t our only neighbors. Maryland Department of Natural Resources estimates a black bear density of around 65 per hundred square miles in Garrett County. Garrett County consists of 656 square miles. Do the math. We’re home to about 425 bears, give or take. And a few have stopped by to pay us a visit. 

We have a bear box, as is necessary, in this campground. Every night I take down my bird feeders, six total, and place them in the box. The box sits about six feet from the end of our picnic table and about twenty feet from the door to the Airstream. A couple weeks ago I heard a terrible banging outside. It was the middle of the night. Carole from the safety of the bed: “Don’t open the door!” My flashlight didn’t penetrate our smoked glass windows, only reflected back in my eyes. Consequently, I slowly opened the door. Momma bear turned to give me the stink-eye. I shined the light in her face. She grunted and the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. From behind the bear box a cub, weighing, I’d guess, around thirty pounds, jumped up on the oak. Mom’s silhouette obscured the entire bear box, she was that big—by far the largest black bear I’ve ever seen. They eventually slipped away into the woods, like ghosts. 

Our bear box.

Two nights later they returned to clean my grill, dragging it from under our awning, about three feet from our pillows, on the other side of the Airstream’s aluminum skin. When I went out to confront them, momma had the grill dismantled and was licking clean the grates. Thank you very much. I tried to shoo them off, but she was intent on finishing the job. No point in starting a job you’re not going to complete. Eventually she and baby bear ambled off, licking BBQ sauce from their cheeks. 

Last night they came back. The grill was secured, the feeders put away, consequently they just expressed their disappointment by beating and pounding on the bear box like spoiled children. I tried to reason with them. “It’s 2:30 in the morning, com’on guys, go to bed.” Eventually they gave up and headed off. I returned to bed grateful I was not a tent camper.

 * * *

A couple hours after writing the above Cooper went nuts on the deck under the awning. Cooper doesn’t go nuts. He’s chill. I stared into the woods down the hill but saw nothing. He paced back and forth, crying and whining. A moment later a call to the rangers came over the radio. “Bear at the dumpster by the entrance gate.” 

It’s going to be an interesting summer.

That’s the report from the woods. Thanks for reading.  

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In The Mountains, Again.

In Camping, Memoir on August 11, 2019 at 8:00 am

Dillon

The view of Peak One Campground from uptop mountainside.

We’ve been in the mountains only two weeks. My lungs are trying to figure out what’s going on. The morning run-walk up the mountainside is a bit more run than walk recently, but the difference is hardly discernable.  Lucy too is lagging, but occasionally gets a surge and charges ahead during our morning outing. A couple of days ago she streamed past me and disappeared down the trail. That’s what we do, leap frog one another on our morning runs. But on this morning, with her out of sight, I heard barking off in the woods where the trail empties out into a clearing. The bark was not Lucy’s. I know her voice. Then I heard that distinct whine of a coyote. Then the barking again, raspy and hoarse, but from a different direction. My heart raced. Lucy had either been loured into or stumbled upon a coyote den. Last year I encountered coyotes in the same area but had forgotten about it until this moment. I picked up my pace, calling for her. She’s a good dog and always returns to my call, though sometimes it takes a while. I reached the clearing.  She wasn’t there. I called again and moved toward where I thought I heard commotion. Then she appeared. Her tongue was bloodied, but she was intact and seemed relieved to see me. I checked her, ran my hands over her little body–no wound, no puncture. The bloodied tongue was–and remains–a mystery.

The next day I put her on leash just before entering the clearing. I surveyed the area and we continued. Suddenly she stopped and sniffed the air. I looked to the edge of the woods. The coyote was watching us, perched behind some scrub brush. It was big, as coyotes go, and looked well fed. I was taken aback, frankly, at how healthy she appeared. Coyote life must be good in the mountains. We continued on, Lucy none the wiser.

The Morning Run_edited

The morning run starts and stops at the lake.

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We are back in Colorado, hosting a campground in the White River National Forest. We will be here until the beginning of October, unless weather drives us out earlier. Last year three feet of snow dropped the day after we pulled out. Nights are already dropping into the low 40s. There is snow still holding on the peaks and ridges around us. (We’re a little over 9000 el.) People are already looking into the mountains to see if the aspens are changing. Unlike the drought of last year, we get rain almost every day. It is welcome, as it keeps the dust down and nourishes the wild flowers.

Our trailer is simple and comfortable. We don’t need much and this style of living underscores our commitment to simple living. Minimalism is the word of common currency and we are minimalists, though I tend to avoid labels that are suspiciously popular. My personal goal of simplicity has most recently included my online life as well as my analogue life. It is one thing to get rid of clothes that are too much in abundance; something else altogether when you attempt to exercise the same philosophy in your online life. I’ve been off Facebook for over two years. I have not missed it one day, even one hour, especially now knowing that it is a data mine for marketers and scammers and Russians. I quit Twitter a year ago. I found it of interest, but burdensome. It started to feel like a puppy, always crying for attention. My Instagram account is still up, but stagnant. It’s there simply as a visual record of the last several years. I work to resist surfing the net and keep a book or two at my elbow to counter the urge to open my laptop. You have to work at important things that are contrary.  We exist in a time that is noisy, foggy, and traffic-bound. Compliance is the motivation of the herd and if you lean in that direction eventually you’ll be grazing mindlessly on consumption, waste, and time squandered. Then you die. I can’t avoid dying but the rest of it is something I can work with.

 

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Yesterday

In Camping, Dogs, Life on August 7, 2018 at 11:29 am

Peak One Campground, Frisco, Colorado

Yesterday while working in the campground I rounded a corner and came upon an elderly gentleman being pulled by three small leashed dogs. I’d met him the day before. His wife had eventually tugged at his elbow, saying, “Enough already, let the man go do his work.” He seemed lonely, though I only thought it because he liked to talk. This morning his wife was not present, only the man and his dogs. I said hello and we talked about dogs for a few minutes. One dog, a white terrier, feisty and keen, was the focus of his comments. As he talked the three leashes became intertwined but the man didn’t seem to notice. The terrier had been his daughter’s dog, he said. She got him when she learned she had breast cancer. She wanted the companionship. The man talked without emotion, in that way people from Kansas do. The flatness of his voice settled on me in emotional way. I began to tear up.  “She told me she wanted me to raise him if she didn’t make it.” We’d had a rain the night before and the tacky aroma of pine was suddenly apparent. I was wearing a jacket, it being cold. I took off my glasses and wiped my tears. The little white terrier was busy sniffing the edge of my boot, likely picking up Lucy’s scent–Lucy, waiting patiently for my return down the hill and across the campground.

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“The things I cared about…”

In Camping, Nature, Wisdom on June 24, 2018 at 9:26 am

The Morning Run_edited

Our morning run starts and ends at the lake. Lucy takes a water break.

I can run again, if you call it that, since the hips were changed out a few years ago. It is a wonderous thing, replacing a body part, as if the truck broke down then got a new gasket. It helps to stay off pavement so I don’t run in the city. But here in Colorado, it’s a different story. The trail to the ridge behind us is dusty earth, not pavement, and that helps, as it seems a tad softer. Earth can be like that, forgiving, if you let it. As a younger man I ran a lot, which is probably why the system–my body–broke down as it did. I had something to prove: faster, faster, farther farther! Now, as I awkwardly transition into old age (YIKES!), it is the simple promise of movement that gets me out the doors. I have nothing to prove. Mary Oliver has a lovely line: “As I grew older the things I cared / about grew fewer, but were more / important.” That sums up much that is true about this stage of life.

At nine thousand feet elevation it takes me a while to get up to the top. I take it slow, and try to maintain an easy pace. I’m not kidding anyone and have no compunction about stopping if I need to. When I stop to catch my breath I try to turn my focus to the landscape, the lake and the surrounding mountains. Peak One and a few other peaks are still holding snow, though a fishing guide told me the snow pack melted too early and too fast this year. The earth can be like that also, not soft, but a reflection of our heart, too often rapacious and unforgiving. Nature is not something out there. It is us and we are it. This seems especially obvious to me this summer.
We’re into month two of life in the mountains and have more than three to go. I’ve not spent so much time out of doors since my summer camp days. We’re living in an Airstream trailer and hosting a campground in the White River National Forest. My morning runs underscore the personal transition that is occurring: that nature is not a thing “out there” so much as it is a place within, as well as without. It is easy to forget that we are born of nature when our lives are spent so often removed from it. With repetition–from the house to the car to the cubicle to the mall to the store and back to the house, repeat–with repetition, we forget the ancient connection to the larger world; we accept the notion that we are separate–separate from the natural world, and separate from one another. There is great danger in that, the belief of “otherness.”  We are seeing a good bit of this currently: people who are “not us,” a natural world for served up for subjugation, the want of civility. It would be best if everyone moved out of doors, took a run to the top of a mountain, and stopping to catch their breath, looked out over a morning valley. Everything seems fitting and orderly when this happens.