Wandering Whims

Dogs aren’t allowed on the hiking trails of Glacier National Park.

This is a true statement.

Two summers ago, I spent three days and two nights camping, hiking, and exploring on my own in Montana’s wilderness in and around Glacier National Park. I’m a practical and logical person, but the first night of camping by myself was both terrifying and telling.

I camped in an old hunting camp in Flathead National Forest. I made a fire, set up my tent, stayed out for as long as I could. But every noise was a hungry bear and every silence an eternity, so I did what I could in that moment:

I locked myself in my car and slept in fits until sunrise.

There’s a level of vulnerability that comes with being human. We’re definitively mortal, we’re not physically protected against predators–with our naked skin and our lack of claws, large teeth or true primate strength. I felt all of these inadequacies that night.

The next day I would start my first solo hike in Glacier. I would be prepared with my bear spray close at hand and making occasional noise because that’s what you do when you hike alone in grizzly country. I would be five minutes into my hike, just getting into the trees. I'd come around a corner, and I would say to myself “Dogs aren’t allowed on the hiking trails of Glacier National Park”. In that same breath, I would realize that it wasn’t a dog that I had come face-to-face with, but a big mouse-eared black bear eating huckleberries, fat and shiny in his summer coat.

Something happened in this moment. The fear, the uncertainty, it all dissipated and I was left with only awe. He looked at me, sat down on his haunches, grunted in my direction, then went back to eating.

I turned and headed up the mountain trail, its edges thick with wildflowers and birds and chattering squirrels. The trail disappeared at the foot of a high waterfall that cascaded over burgundy rocks towering hundreds of feet above me. When I turned to face the landscape, I saw mountains of immeasurable, fantastical mass, turquoise glacial waters at their feet, storm clouds on the horizon. I hiked to a high grassy knoll and from there I sat and watched as the storm progressed over the opposite side of the valley, I looked down the hillside and I found my friend the bear rolling playfully and lazily down a muddy hillside.

That night, I slept alone and with my tent backed up to a thick, black forest. I slept easily, deeply, restfully. I dreamt of high waterfalls and fat, happy bears.