Creek Running North

As sad as this is, and it’s sad, it’s better than most of the google searches I get. The latest, most popular one is “maklin naked.” Yes, spelled that way.

Sorry, Mr. Clarke.  In the weird depths of my mind, a rather simple statement about a search string has morphed into something far more profound.  That’s right, boys and girls, I’m going to bypass Chris (unless he deletes me, in which case I’m screwed) and ask you to step up to the plate and tell us all about the most important event in your life.  Was it the day you were born?  They day you got married?  The day John Lennon died?  Take the test, do your homework and regale us with the most profound event of your existence, the moment that encapsulates your true cosmic purpose.

And to prove I’m no coward, I’ll be the first one to jump off the cliff.

The most important event in my life?  That’s easy.  It was my 44th birthday, which occured this past August.  My wife, bless her heart, had the foresight to give me a pair of wonderful new LL Bean slippers.  The very same slippers in which I outran an enraged grizzly bear a week later.  Without those slippers...... well, let’s just say that you wouldn’t have any homework tonight.

I’m just starting to get interesting search strings. Today I was excited to learn that I’m #1 for “minty frog”!

Mmmm. Minty frog.

If the Griz had really wanted you, you would have been toast, Tost!  Slippers or no slippers.  Of course I don’t know the particulars, but I do know Griz, and you can’t outrun them.  The fact that we don’t have dozens of fatalities each year is due more to the bear’s forebearance (no pun intended) than to any action on our part.  While I haven’t experienced a Grizzly charge myself (one half-hearted bluff by a Black Bear doesn’t count), I know three biologists that have, and the bear stopped or turned aside before contact. 

Come to think of it, that still may have been the most important day in all your lives.  The day a grizzly (for whatever reason) didn’t kill you.

As you could probably tell, OGeorge, I wasn’t being completely serious.  Still, I did run away from a charging grizzly in my new slippers last summer — and lived to tell about it.  (But not, as you might suspect, because of my slippers.) And the bear was indeed bent on death & destruction.  If you decide that you’re interested in the complete & unabridged version of the story, let me know and I’ll tell you where you can find it in print.  Although I’m afraid you’ll have to pony up $4.95, as the magazine in question isn’t free.

As for it being the most important day in my life.  Nope.  But it certainly was an interesting one, and I broke my personal record for physical proximity to an irate griz — it now stands at less than 15 feet.