Before you read this, it's way past 25 words, a bit gory, a bit Revenant, a bit Without a Paddle, a bit Stephen King, a total product of being at home bored and wanting to write something entertaining to pass the time.


I was backpacking in the Alaskan wilderness when I was a young lad. As we were preparing for our trip out there, we thought we were being smart and packing all the 10 essentials plus about 20 non-essential, but trip enhancing items. We started heading out in the Kodiak for a week long trek, climbing along glaciers, being in the most pristine wilderness that North America has to offer. About 3 days into out trip the weather started to turn, and quick. The rain started coming down hard, way harder than we expected. No worries, we have our tent and a tarp canopy that we put up just in case this happened.

The campsite we chose was surrounded by large pines and giant boulders, all a few hundred feet away from the lake's shore line. We knew that this camp site had it's advantages, but unbeknownst to us, the surrounding incline above us, was an area that has been hit hard with these storms, and last winter experienced a few avalanches which loosened up the soil, roots, and the granite rocks and boulders towering high above us. Well, this rainstorm was the final straw for this area. We start to hear rumblings, and then feel the earth tremble below us, we look up and with our strapped on flashlights, we see trees and rocks starting to slide down the hill towards us. We immediately make a break for the lake and jump in as we had no other choices to make in that moment. The trees and boulders destroy our campsite and cause the lake to swell and create waves larger than imaginable that sent us scrambling, and thrashing to the other side of the lake and into the once stream, now rushing river down and away from all of our belongings.

As we make it down the rapids, we're eventually able to hang on to some branches and protruding rocks and one by one we hoisted ourselves out of the water and onto dry land. With the rain picking up, and thunder and lightning erupting around us, we had to find somewhere to hid for the night, and attempt to dry off and stay warm. We headed up towards to the hillside, and eventually found ourselves a cavernous hide away. Tucked away from the elements, we were thrilled to have found something to hide in for the night. We quickly took inventory of what we had with us, realizing that it would be difficult to find our campsite, and if we did, next to impossible to find anything that would have survived that horrendous slide. Our inventory included a few pocket knives, flint, two powerbars, one water logged flash light, and one of those survival key chain kits.

We found enough dry kindling to light a small fire near the entrance of the cave. Once we lit that, we decided to try and fall asleep for a few hours and wait the storm out. This is where our biggest mistake was made. We all were able to find a few hours of rest, but were quickly woken up to the grumblings of a large grizzly bear, who's cave we had stumbled into. The bear must have made the same mistake we had, and been trapped outside during the storm, found somewhere to lay low and ventured back in the morning. When the bear let out it's momentous roar, we all were scared for our lives and knew there was only two ways out of this, we die, or it dies. Three against one would seem like good odds, but when the bear still has at least 200 pounds on the total weight of the crew, the odds dropped significantly.

The bear started the attack by taking a swipe at Rod, who quickly fell to the ground and rolled away. The bear decided next to go after Fisher, who was backing up to the walls of the cave, quickly becoming trapped. As the bear got closer and stood up ready to attack, I made a an effort to take the attention away and start hurling rocks and burning logs at the bear. This got his attention and lured him away from Fisher. Rod was starting to get back up, bloodied from the swipe that left his face gashed open near the ear and cheeks. He noticed the bear making it's way towards me, he glanced at Fisher who both realized that needed to do something before this grizzly bear took his opportunity to tear me apart. They broke open the survival kit and took the rope out, Rod attempted to jump on the bear and choke it from behind. Fisher took the opportunity to take an embered log and start bashing the bears knees. The bear over powered both of them, throwing Rod off it's back, biting Fisher in his arm, and thrashing him.

I took this as my only chance, i took the two pockets knives laying on the ground next time and rushed towards the bear. In what seemed like a herculean leap towards him, I landed and stabbed the bear in it's neck and behind it's ear, attempting to make quick fatal blows. After the first two stabs, i quickly did this again and twisted the knives as I took them out from it's thick fur and skin. Rod, taking notice at this jumped up and took a bowling ball sized rock and smashed it against the bears head. After a few blows to the head, the bear finally slowed down and fell to the ground. We couldn't take any more chances, and took the knife and cut it's throat as if it were a hog, to be bled out before it was butchered.

We all sat back and watching the life leave this apex predator who almost took our own lives. In a fit of rage, and necessity, we decided to skin the bear and clean the hide to take back with us as a reminder of this horrific event. We rested a few hours, attempting to build up strength to make the trek back into town, knowing we all had wounds that needed to be professionally attended to. Back in town, we got cleaned up, and took the hide to be cleaned and tanned properly.

This event took a huge toll on my personally, and I became a recluse in the woods outside of Spokane, Washington. As time went on, the area quickly became filled with more populated and the woods were being torn down to build housing and condos. To thwart this, I took the bear pelt, wore it as if I were a bear, and walked around the woods in the early evening attempting to scare the town folks away from my home. This happened for years, and every time I wore that bear pelt, I felt more and more powerful, and took the energy from the bear. Wearing a bear became me, I am bear.