I am currently reading this book about the five large carnivores of Scandinavia and I am absolutely humbled, both by finding out how little I knew about them, what prejudice I had against them and how people that live in close proximity to them can both love, respect and be angry with them at the same time. I am reading the original release in Swedish.
- What have you encountered in the wild?
- When, where, how?
- What were your initial thoughts, feelings and reactions (physical, psychological, etc.)?
- What do think of them in general? <— this last question applies to everybody, regardless of whether you have seen or met one of these large carnivores or not.
Personally, without having met any one of them, I am humbled, scared, amazed and intrigued by them. I feel for those whose - for instance - livestock are threatened by them, especially if it directly damages business. I also strongly believe that the matter should not be dumbed down to the dichotmy of “ignore those that suffer from them” or “eradicate them”. We are far too intelligent and developed a race to degrade ourselves so.
I was quite near a black bear once but with a group of people so I felt pretty secure. It actually followed us for like a mile walking late at night, middle of winter along a mountain road. Technically I don’t know it was a black bear because we didn’t see it, but we heard it keeping pace in the darkness maybe fifty feet away and it’s the only thing (other than Bigfoot) that checks all the boxes for that behavior. A deer wouldn’t be doing that and if it had been a mountain lion we wouldn’t have heard it.
I’ve seen brown bears from a distance and from inside a car. I’ve been close to coyotes, swam near sharks, always with people or with some kind of barrier.
The one that freaked me out was different. I was living in California and regularly hiked the nearby trails, my favorite being up Cerro San Luis. One day I decided I wanted to watch the sunset from the peak so I grabbed my water bottle and walking stick (tall and pointy) and set out in the evening. It was gorgeous! Fog rolled in right as the horizon lit up all shades of red, really breathtaking. I watched until it got dark and that’s when I realized I had neglected to bring a light of any kind. (This would have been ~2012. Whatever phone I had was not particularly useful for illumination.) The night was moonless, and the trail was now blanketed in thick fog.
I got lost.
I took the wrong turn at a fork and didn’t realize until I was clear under the fog a mile or two the wrong direction. While contemplating my situation I happened to glance a dark shape just barely silhouetted against the clouds. Something on four legs that watched me for a few moments then silently melted away. In that moment I remembered seeing “mountain lion sighting” warning signs at the trailhead earlier that month and felt an intense, primal sensation I’ve not experienced before or since. Being stalked, being hunted, in such a precarious position… I picked up a large stone and waited in silence for at least ten minutes, grateful the whole time that I always hiked with my stick, before I decided it was safe to pick my way back up to where I got turned around. Slowly, cautiously, nauseous from the adrenaline, until on the main trail I ran into a family of four merrily returning from the top with headlamps and I rather sheepishly asked to join them. (They were nice about it). I don’t night-hike solo anymore.
In the light of a new day I went back and looked around and I’m pretty sure what I saw was a large bobcat rather than a mountain lion, which would have still been worrying given the circumstance of being nearly blind, so I wasn’t in as much mortal danger as I felt. In the moment I’m not sure if “afraid” is the right word. Yes there was fear but it was tempered by other instincts. I was prepared to fight that animal with a rock and a pointy stick just like our distant ancestors would have, and everything in my mind and body was shifted into that very specific gear. No coherent “I could die here” thoughts or anything like that.
I’m glad they’re out there. Even if I had been attacked I wouldn’t bear them any ill will, that’s just carnivores being carnivores. I was more careful after that to avoid a similar situation but I don’t want wild spaces to lose their large predators. It’s pretty easy to be safe and share the planet.