Teaching About Black Bears

One summer on the Fourth of July I went solo hiking to one of my favorite places in all the world; up Flint Mill Trail on Holston Mountain. The view near the top, where a huge flat rock juts out toward and above the great Holston Valley, is beyond my ability to aptly describe. Perhaps I will make my best attempt in another column. (I will throw in here that South Holston Lake appeared that day as a blue sapphire far below, bedecked by a hundred tiny flecks of shiny diamond boats.)

Arriving at the trailhead, I stepped out of my car and saw a young man riding by on a horse. He stopped when he saw me don my backpack. “You got a pistol on you?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. Then my facial expression asked “Why?” before my tongue did.

“Lots of bear sightin’s on this mountain the past few days,” he told me. “Better carry a gun.”

“I hope I do see a bear!” I replied, and quite cheerfully.

He gave me a look that he might have cast toward a young child who had no idea what they were talking about. Then he rode on.

About halfway up the mountain I encountered several ripe wild blueberry bushes. I noticed that most of the berries had been recently devoured. Was it a black bear? I surely hoped so. I have seen somewhere between 70 and 80 of the bruins over half a century of hiking the Appalachians. A black bear sighting never grows jaded to me (yes, I always strive to view wildlife safely from a proper distance).

As I neared the indescribable view at the top, I came upon two men returning back down the trail.

I yelled out, “Looks like I found the two bears who been eatin’ all these blueberries!”