Ash, Janet, and Dianne were tripping merrily down the beautiful trail (well, plodding wearily may be more accurate, this was mile 6 of an 8.5 mile walk, but it WAS all downhill from here). Suddenly, Janet stops, points, and whispers, "bear." Ash, currently in sweep position, stops, but misses the whisper, and says, "what?" Dianne points, and says, softly, "bear."
All freeze. Just to the right of the trail and ten feet ahead is a beautiful young bear. He looks up at them, then resumes loudly crunching acorns. In a pack, Janet, Ash, and Dianne take five steps backward, each silently reviewing her scanty bear lore.
"Don't turn your back to him,"
"He looks young, are there more? Where's the Mama."
"Hold up your hiking poles. Look big."
"Are we supposed to blow a whistle?"
Bear ambles a few steps toward them, and their alarm escalates. They carefully retreat another five steps. He does appear to be bigger than a cub. Maybe he's last year's cub, and has been put out to find his own way, especially since no Mama has appeared.
They watch as he chomps and occasionally looks at them, and unfortunately, makes slow progress in their direction.
"Let's give him the trail." There really is nowhere to go opposite the bear. They can get a few feet off the trail, but it slopes sharply. There is no possibility of detouring around the bear.
"Should I blow the whistle?" asks Ash. "Would you get it out of the top compartment of my pack"?
Then Bear ambles across the trail to their side. The three nervous hikers sidestep back across the trail ("don't turn your back on him"!) and stand in the trailside brush.
Bear crosses back to his original side and resumes chomping. Ash, Janet, and Dianne sidestep back to mid trail.
"Maybe we should try the whistle," says Dianne. "Maybe just a soft toot." They're not sure why, but things need to move along, and perhaps that will change something.
Ash gives a tiny tweet on the whistle. Bear looks up, then resumes chomping. The women stand in the trail. "Well, that wasn't helpful".
After a few more minutes, Bear suddenly leaps onto a nearby tree. The women watch in amazement as he quickly scrambles thirty feet up to the first branch.
"Wow, that was fast."
"Yeh, but if he got up that fast, he could come down just as fast."
"I think he's trying to tell us we should move on now."
"Do you really think so?"
They screwed up their courage, and in a tight pack, walked past the bear in his tree, and continued on, stealing looks back to make sure the trail remained empty.
After a tenth of a mile, Ash said, "Durn, we should have made a selfie with the bear."
