Bear deterrent hike part 2
A photojournalistic essay
For those needing to know how I performed in the bread bake-off: The no-knead bread I made from a favorite family recipe off the internet did not win. I, however, did receive numerous compliments on it AND it was my favorite even in a blind taste test. So, kind of a win.
In June, I went home to Montana to be a bear deterrent on the Sphinx Mountain hike with my dad and two of his buddies. Turns out, I was good at it as all bears were deterred. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.
Speaking of Montana, there are lots of great things about its highways. One is that, while we have speed limits again, we have options. If it’s nighttime, the speed limit is 65 mph, but in the day it’s 70 mph. Given this, I suspect there’s some room for roadside negotiation if you were to get pulled over for exceeding the respective speed limit. Who’s to say exactly when “night” actually starts, you know? I always wondered how speeding was enforced when the state highway daytime speed limit was ”REASONABLE & PRUDENT.” This is not a joke. It’s what roadside signs showed, as evidenced by this photograph by a guy on the Internet.1
People have wildly different standards for what’s reasonable and what’s prudent for all kinds of things—hair colors, life decisions, what’s acceptable public behavior. I only got a couple of years of licensed driving under my seatbelt before a darn speed limit was reinstated in 1999, and thus never got to chat with Highway Patrol about their definitions for which types of speeds were considered reasonable and prudent.
Also, our highways are typically not congested, which means a person can do things like pull over willy-nilly and make reasonable and prudent U-turns to take pictures of scenes like THIS.
From approximately five different locations, I took twenty-one pictures of the mountain I anticipated summiting the next day since it and the weather kept collaborating to get prettier and prettier. Even when I wasn’t pulled over taking pictures, I have to admit to admiring Sphinx Mountain a little more than I admired the highway. In my defense, you can see for miles on that stretch of road, and there were very cars on the road.
That night after dinner, my dad and I went to the local Rosauer’s grocery store to acquire fresh bear spray. You might think a person would need to go to a sporting goods store for such things, but in Montana anyone can marry anyone AND you can find bear spray in all stores. Speaking of bear spray, in my previous piece, I neglected to give a critical public service announcement: One does not wear bear spray to deter bears as one wears bug repellent to deter bugs. You spray it only when being charged by a bear. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Dad and I already knew this, but multiple people saw us with three canisters of bear spray and took us for city folk in need of their local expertise. There followed multiple points of bear advice and bear stories from several different individuals. We were still laughing about these gems of unsolicited advice when we saw this shot of the Spanish Peaks mountains from the Town Pump where we stopped to gas up.
Note: Montana is not always this pretty! It’s much less pretty when, for example, you’re pulled over for speeding, or are being charged by bears. Locals, most of whom want to keep Montana to themselves, appreciate me telling you this.
I didn’t get to bed at a reasonable and prudent time, so the next morning I woke up dreading all of it—the hike, the anticipated bears, and that it was all looking to occur in cold rain. But as is so often the way, you get out of bed, you brush your teeth, and you decide you can actually face the day with a good attitude.
A fun drive with Mike and Glade took us along the same highway I’d driven the day before, until we turned off at what could only generously be labeled a town, McAllister. We then headed down a dirt road into the very jaws of Montana Mordor: dark clouds, light rain, no other adventurers in sight, threat of bears everywhere.
The hike began uneventfully. And stayed that way—in a good way. Not a single bear was seen, but we did see a couple piles of their, ah, poop, on the trail. This ended up being honestly optimal since it validated my fear of bears, but we didn’t have to learn on the fly how exactly you use bear spray to deter a bear if it charges from downwind. Or upwind. Whichever term means “Whatever you spray will come right back at you.” My sister-in-law passed along a tip to spray the bear spray at the ground, but in these winds even that tactic would have literal blowback. And unlike a movie scene, you don’t get to say “Cut!” and request to redo a scene if it doesn’t go well.
At one point, Glade told us about a rural local he’d met in his varied work around the state. This guy gave him very helpful rural directions like these: “You’re going to drive until you see the Y in the road. Take that. Then just after the Smith place, turn there.” This felt relevant when we came to fork in the trail and had to trust that Mike and my dad remembered which fork was the wrong one they’d taken when they’d previously tried to hike Sphinx Mountain. And ended up admiring the mountain from the ridge leading up to a different mountain. We laughed about all this, and we weren’t far into the hike when I realized that I wasn’t bear deterrent; Glade’s laugh was. It’s shared frequently, it’s got volume, it’s full of mirth.
It was around this point we realized there was an unanticipated time constraint, and that we would need to turn back before summiting. That was a bummer. But back when I was writing life advice-adjacent stuff, I wrote this one about my favorite five words. Wouldn’t you know it, but these five words come up all the time in conversation and life: “It is what it is.” And they went through my mind at this moment, since there was nothing to be done to make the situation other than exactly what it was.
For the weeks up to this point, I thought the point of the trip was to get to the top of the mountain. It was not. The point of the trip was just to aim for the top of Sphinx Mountain, enjoy great company, use our cool bodies, have a summer event to anticipate and train for, and write about it. Maybe it’s a little bit like life or anything interesting we do where what we think is the point often is not, but I no longer write sappy stuff like that. We did make it to the top of SOMETHING—the saddle between Helmet Mountain and Sphinx Mountain—saw goats, my ham sandwich was exceptionally good, Dad brought candy bars to share (BIG DAY!) and Glade was generous sharing his jerky. We enjoyed ten miles of bear promise and no actual bear threat in the end, and got ourselves back to town reasonably and prudently. All in all, a good day.
Isn’t life cool, sometimes unexpected, and aren’t people interesting?
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P.S. For those of you who don’t know, in my life since leaving corporate (I left my start-up tech job post-acquisition in Fall 2022), I do things besides write about such important topics as this. To pay the bills, and because I really do love it in a totally different way than writing, I help people get empowered with their money and increase their personal autonomy in my work as a financial coach.
And I’m getting close to the final draft of Dear Fellow Dreamer, my second book. Dear Fellow Spender will be getting a makeover and will relaunch when I launch what I’ll refer to sometimes as Dreamer. If you know anyone who needs either book, or coaching with me, please send them my way!
This guy had the foresight to document the sign, and keep the photograph for decades. https://www.reddit.com/r/Montana/comments/16cja2w/remember_when_a_reasonable_and_prudent_speed/
Such a fun essay. It transported me back to your home state. It's a beauty!