6/26-27/19, Rattlesnake North Zone, Montana

Cinnamon the Bear

“I cry out to the Lord; I plead for the Lord’s mercy. I pour out my complaints before him and tell him all my troubles. When I am overwhelmed, you alone know the way I should turn. Wherever I go, my enemies have set traps for me. I look for someone to come and help me, but no one gives me a passing thought! No one will help me; no one cares a bit what happens to me. Then I pray to you, O Lord. I say ‘You are my place of refuge. You are all I really want in life.” – Psalm 142:1-5

Less than a mile down onto the main trail of the Rattlesnake Recreation Area reports of a bear sighting directly on the trail were already being passed on to me from passersby. In my one and only other bear encounter, the bear was far off the trail and I had neglected to bring any bear spray with me doubting that any bears lived close to Missoula. This time I was prepared. I set down my hiking backpack, switched out the short lens on my camera for a longer lens, and picked up my walking pace hoping to capture the perfect bear photo. The last hiker to warn me of the bear said that it was no farther than 90 yards from where I set down my pack to prepare my camera. My first solo camping attempt was getting off to an exhilarating start. My head was on a constant swivel checking the base of hills and forested fields for any sign of movement. Coming up on mile two, a jogger quickly passed me by. I thought he would be turning around within the next few minutes after running into the bear somewhere down the trail and I would receive an update on the bear’s location. I had hiked much further than 90 yards by that point, but no matter the bear could have walked up the trail, I told myself. More time passed and I had walked further up the trail than I had ever been. The jogger had turned around and passed me again on his way home with nothing to say of a bear. At mile three I crossed out of the southern zone of the recreation area into the northern zone where the true wilderness opened up. My expectancy of a bear sighting depleted. There was no bear to be seen, just me walking in the woods.

Within the last two weeks of spring semester at the University of Montana, I applied for a job at Minuteman Aviation. It was a last second sort of thing. The temporary wildlife job I had applied for molded into a volunteer position and ROTC wouldn’t pay me over the summer for doing nothing, so suddenly I ran into a lack of funds. By the grace of God, my interview at Minuteman went better than I could have imagined, and I landed a job that would keep me from working at the typical fast food joint over the summer. Three weeks into the job, I was given a shift from late afternoon through the evening. I’m grateful for the option of sleeping in every morning, but when most people work from 9-5 each day it makes it difficult to spend any real time with anyone. My two days off work are every Wednesday and Thursday, so the weekend adventures my roommates and I were planning would have to go on without me. My days off are mostly spent reading, catching up on house dishes, and going on long runs. The routine was good for a while, but I needed a break from even this. I never envisioned going on a camping trip by myself and I imagine most people don’t. I still wasn’t too fond of the idea the day of, but it was something different from the routine worth trying. I had already gone on one long road trip to a national park alone, this was just the next step up. It was 1:05 p.m. when I stepped foot onto the trail and began the long walk into the woods.

Walking a short distance passed the southern-northern boundary line, I came up on a fresh pile of scat in the middle of the trail. It was large enough to be bear scat I thought, and I looked up to see a black bear no farther than 15 yards away right off the trail. It rummaged through the bushes and peeked under some rocks looking for grub. I took a couple steps back and what might as well have been the sound of thunder, I accidentally cracked a twig triggering the ears of the bear. Immediately it’s head perked up and we locked eyes. It took me a few seconds to get past my astonishment that I was so close to such an incredible animal and realize that this animal had the potential to rip me to shreds if it chose to do so. I took a few more steps backward and it inched onto the trail slowly stepping in my direction. A small rock and a bear spray canister became my hasty defense against the bear that was drawing closer. It appeared as if I wouldn’t need these weapons, because it quickly lost interest in me and went back to foraging. However, I had not lost interest in it. Setting down my pack, I pulled out my camera to snap a few photos at a safe distance. Hiding behind a bend in the trail, I perked up and aimed the camera lens straight at the bear on an open dirt trail. The situation couldn’t have been better. These set of photos would go alongside my series of photos of wild beasts from Nairobi National Park. Applying pressure with my right pointer finger to focus the lens on the bear, my camera lens did the opposite. Every picture came out like a sketchy bigfoot photo that was just clear enough, so you could tell the animal in the photo was a bear. Sudden irritation arose at my camera that had hindered a perfect photo yet again on an adventure. My time was up, the bear kept inching closer and I wasn’t figuring out this problem within the next few seconds. In a quick decision, I decided to walk off the trail and wait for the bear to pass by. Within that quick decision, I made the regrettable choice of leaving my pack on the trail. After waiting a few minutes, I guessed the bear was attempting to tear into my pack, so I looped back around onto the trail not wanting to come up right on it spooking it. I rushed back to the trail thinking it was farther up, until I stepped onto another twig. The bear was again a few yards ahead of me, but it had no idea I was near. At the sound of the twig breaking it sprung it’s nose up from sniffing around the ground and ran a couple feet away from the sound. I took cover behind a tree as it stopped and scanned the area for what could have made the noise. It didn’t seem to take notice of me and went back to looking for berries. I waited and watched behind the tree as the bear crept further down the trail continuing its search.

During the school year there wasn’t much opportunity for encounters like this. I either had too much homework and not enough time for a hike or it was plainly too cold out to not be miserable. For a long while, the outdoors has been my place of escape for my stressed mind and body. It was where I encountered God. It’s why I started an outdoor adventure blog. But when the outdoors is not accessible, where do I experience God then?

Soon it was far enough away, so I could walk back onto the trail and check if my pack was still intact. I peeked around the bend of the trail with one eye opened expecting a torn hiking bag with its carrying items scattered across the trail, but to my happy surprise it looked as though it had not been touched. One long sigh of relief echoed out of my chest as I walked back to my pack. I stood there for a moment in awe of what just transpired with my senses on full alert. An older man rode up the trail on his bicycle just then and had just passed by the bear. I shared my bear encounter with him and my blurry photos. Another man came walking up from the north side of the trail and joined our huddle. I retold my story with amazement and enthusiasm considering myself the lucky one of the bunch. Neither of them seemed impressed with my photos even after I tried to explain that my camera refused to focus in on the bear. It didn’t matter, I had come into closer contact with a black bear in the natural world than most people could ever say they did or would dare. No safe fences in between us, no high walls to stand atop, just me, my camera, and a bear I would like to give the name Cinnamon based on his grizzly look alike fur. The outdoor world had again proved itself more worthy of exploration than the downtown streets of Disney World.

God’s good creation had proved itself better than all the rides, food, and fancy hotels the world had to offer. Even in Florida, my water world animal encounters (and I don’t mean Sea World) trumped any theme park. Granted most of my kayak adventures ended up in long hours of sweating under the hot sun and pulling seaweed off my fishing line, but occasionally a lone manatee would glide across the shallow waters of Oldsmar, Florida switching a grueling task of battling waves into an epic manatee chase. It’s amazing how a single encounter can change your perspective in an instant. It seems like my life is a collection of these type of encounters and every other day is just filler in between. These encounters are the ones worth writing stories about, because no one wants to hear about you walking in the woods alone for five hours.

The biker rode on north and the hiker picked back up south down the trail, leaving me again alone. Except now around every turn there was the possibility of another bear popping out of a group of overgrown shrubs or drinking by one of the many streams that flowed into the Rattlesnake Creek. The hike was brought back to life from a quiet place where the only sound was the crunching of pebbles beneath my feet. I reached the first of what would be three short bridges crossing over skinny streams flowing down nearby mountains. My plan was to try to wait to at least 4:00 p.m. to eat my first of three meals I packed, but my stomach had been rumbling since before the bear encounter. It was sometime from 3:00 – 3:30 p.m. when I pulled out my JIF peanut-butter and knapweed honey tortilla wrap. I was one happy camper for the next few minutes as I munched on sweetness and played back a possible once in a lifetime encounter. The sun was out, my water filter pouch had been refilled at the stream, and my stomach had been relaxed with a PB&J to look forward to later that night.

In Kenya I was a happy camper. God was doing something new around every corner. My spirit was constantly engulfed in a flood of people striving to know God and make Him known. Each day we had a mission and it was to spread the love of Christ. God graced me with His presence and goodness almost too many times to count in a place halfway around the world. God was in Kenya. What has now occurred more than a year ago is still rushing through my mind. My senses can still remember what it felt like to encounter God. Now that I am home going to a school where knowing God is not the highest priority in the hearts of college Americans, where do I encounter God? Where is God on the long walk through the woods and no one is around? Where is He when the rain begins to fall?

The sun became blocked out by dark thunder clouds catching up to me. It started out as a light sprinkle of rain like most times it rains in Missoula, not anything like the steady appearing thunderstorms of Tampa, Florida. As time went on the rain grew heavier. I began to regret choosing to leave my rain jacket in the car to keep my pack from being too cluttered with objects. I met up again with the biker who had rode north after the bear encounter. He turned around to go home but decided to stop and aid a first-time solo camper unfamiliar with the wilderness ahead. He informed me that the Franklin bridge campsite was only three miles ahead of me. He described the campsite as not much more than a whole in the ground and suggested I tread ahead of it up two switchbacks leading up a mountain to more scenic campgrounds. I reached the Franklin Bridge campsite at 4:00 p.m. just as the rain started pouring down. There was enough tree shade to keep me perfectly covered from the heavy rain if I stood in certain spots. With the amount of rain falling, the idea of setting up camp there was appealing. If I chose to, that meant six hours of laying in my tent with nothing but my journal and Bible. I waited out the storm for about ten minutes and it passed within that time. I climbed out of my hole and started up the switchbacks on lookout for a more pristine campsite.

The switchbacks led high up a mountain with another parallel to it across the valley floor. A river flowed through the valley. The land cut through the river at points creating forks in the river and small rocky islands far below my growing elevation. Heavy boulders constricted the river at one of the campsites forcing it into almost a rushing waterfall and then the rocks cleared further up the river letting it breathe. This constriction was a tempting spot to set up camp, but the noise of the rushing whitewater would make it difficult to fall asleep and it was only 5:30 p.m. by that point, a bit too early to pull out the tent to rest for the night. I did however stop for some close-up photos of the whitewater. The boulders provided deceitful footing as I tried to inch as close as possible to where the water spat between two boulders. Without warning, my foot slid down the massive rock toward the brutal current. The providence of God struck again as my foot gained stability almost as quickly as it lost it.

One more stop at another possible campsite, but it just didn’t sit well with me. I hiked on in hopes of walking upon luxury in the woods. Trotting down the path, my eyes diverted to an open patch of ground amid overgrown grasses covering trees that had fallen long ago. I knew instinctively that small patch would be my campsite. It laid far from the trail near a nice steady pace of flowing water. I bushwhacked my way through the tall grass and rested on a log by my newly established campsite. The large array of mosquitoes turned out to be more of an annoyance than I had anticipated forcing me to rush through my lunch sized dinner and set up my tent. It had been over a year since the last time I pulled out the fancy REI brand parts out of their storage sacks, but everything turned out to be successful. The tent was ready by 7:00 p.m. and I crawled in to avoid the mosquitoes. Killing one on entry, the tent was made mosquito free.

Now completely alone an uneasy feeling set in. One of immediate regret and anxiety. There I was in the middle of the wilderness with no other living thing (besides bugs and plants) in sight. The only other feeling I can equate it to is being out in the ocean with no land in sight; nothing to be seen, but you and whatever lies beneath the surface. I immediately went to my Bible to rid myself of this terrible sense of fear. I read a few pages, but my mind was still distracted with the thought of being alone miles away from civilization. My plan of spending hours in Bible reading and prayer wasn’t turning out as fulfilling as I would have liked. I contemplated packing up the tent and walking back. I wouldn’t get back till early in the morning but walking in the dark was better than sitting alone in the dark. My plan for freedom from this wilderness was quickly dashed away as I remembered that I had forgotten my headlamp back home. The choice was taken away, I had to spend the night in the woods. By 8:00 p.m. I made my first attempt at falling asleep. Anxiety and daylight prevented this from occurring. Once again, I opened the scriptures, but this time to a book that often brings my soul comfort: Psalms. I read till my heart was focused on the comforting words of the Psalmist. Now 9:00 p.m., I made another pass at sleeping. To back up the scriptures, I repeated, “I am no longer a slave to fear” in my head till I drifted to sleep. My cowardice and reliance on God became very apparent. I awoke later in my tent and could tell the outside light sinking into the tent grew dimmer. I checked my watch and it was now close to 10:00 p.m. The light was fading, but my prayers asking for God’s comfort continued into the night till I drifted back to sleep ready to leave first thing in the morning.

My eyes opened to a brighter tent. I checked the time and could tell the watch hands were drawing close to 5:00 a.m. I recorded the time in my journal the best I could with limited visibility. Luckily, I’ve had plenty of practice in my college classrooms needing to copy down notes without staring down at my paper, so I was sure what I wrote would be legible. Upon exiting the tent, my first action of that Thursday morning would be to take a few pictures of my campsite to prove I had accomplished a solo camping trip. The sun was still on the rise forcing the flash to go off on my camera. The dark pictures with leafless branches hanging in every direction made my campsite appear like a horror scene adding to the drama of camping alone in the woods. The time had come to make my escape. The first item on the list of equipment to pack away was my camping pillow, which immediately became a problem. After two attempts to roll up the smallest piece of my camping equipment, the problem revealed itself. I had forgotten to let out the air. I moved past that lone mistake and refused to let it discourage me. Surprisingly, putting away the remainder of my gear went rather smoothly. I managed to complete the job at exactly 6:00 a.m. and set out for home.

I started on the path like a fugitive avoiding the law and made steady progress. After one long lonely hike that seemed to take much longer than the accent to my dark mosquito infested campsite, which in reality turned out to be two hours faster, I spotted my car glimmering like the light at the end of a dark tunnel. On the way back there were two thoughts that ran through my head: When was I ever going to get home? And when was I going to see another person? The need to know that I wasn’t the only human in this wild place became a craving. It wasn’t till the final three miles of an approximately ten-mile hike that I into a group of women enjoying a nice morning jog. Arriving home, full of tales to tell, I flung open the front door expecting to be greeted by my roommates. I searched the house for signs of life, but there was none. The house was empty, and I was completely alone, except I was never really alone.

Weeks before my bear encounter, I was on my way to the movie theater where I would meet up with a friend. Traffic was heavy, which is unusual for Missoula, forcing me to enjoy a nice snail pace drive to the theater. I began flipping the radio stations and landed on a station playing a sermon. The preacher had an Australian accent making him enjoyable to listen to, so I kept it on. He gave his testimony of coming to faith but ended his sermon with a bit I did not expect. He didn’t issue some grand challenge to be more vocal about faith, but instead insisted that the Christian should set aside at least one minute each day to spend time alone with God. He suggested creating a routine of talking with God every day. This idea wasn’t new to me, but I never really experimented with it. I committed myself to this routine having no idea how close God really wants to be with us.

A few weeks of praying had gone, and I had been asking God to become “All I really want in life.” I wanted that to be true in my life. If everything and everyone was taken away and all I had was God, would He be enough? Sitting in the kitchen, I had my laptop opened up to YouTube. A Francis Chan sermon showed up on my recommended feed and looked like a good way to spend some time. He preached out of Acts 4:23-31. In these verses the early church offered up a prayer to the Lord. “And give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word. Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” I finished the sermon, closed the laptop and spoke the simple prayer of asking God for courage. The courage to believe that He is enough. In that moment God stepped into the room. He filled the room with His unmistakable draw-dropping presence. It became hard to stand straight up, because all my heart wanted to do was praise God. Tears rolled down my face as I felt a peace I had not held since over a year ago in a slum. I knew in my heart that God was enough for me. Now I wasn’t in a super spiritual place and I certainly wasn’t on mission with twenty-five other Christians, but God decided to show me again just how good He really is. I called up my Intervarsity leader, Jeremy Johnson, and could barely keep it together as I told him what God did. JJ was with me in Kenya and I told him then how this loneliness had plagued me for, so long. In Kenya I told him that nothing mattered, but loving God and being in relationship with Him, because it was there that I encountered true love for the first time. Now the thing God had started in my heart was true. What made it true you might ask? A single encounter with my Heavenly Father proving that He isn’t just in Kenya, but He is here with me now and He will always be with me even to the end of the age.

Unlike hiking through the woods, we don’t need to set aside two whole days of a free schedule to encounter God. Jesus desires intimacy with us each and every day. There is no greater gift than drawing near to God. He has granted us the opportunity to lean on His chest and listen to His heartbeat for us. Often, we desire to encounter God in grand encounters, like feeling the Earth shake or to hear God speak to us from a whirlwind, but more often than not God is found in the broken places. He is in the long walk through the woods, when you think no one is around. When you start to believe that your prayers go up like smoke dissipating in the sky, God is there listening to every word. When all your effort seems like it’s progressing nowhere, God is there giving you the grace and strength to continue. When you start to wonder if God really does cast your sin into a sea of forgetfulness, He is there reminding you of His act of divine grace Jesus accomplished on the cross. When you’re sitting on your bedroom floor and all your mind can conjure up is your failures, God is there saying my strength can be used in your weakness. God reminds of us of His love in simple yet extraordinary ways. He does it through encouragement coming from a friend you weren’t expecting to call you, answering a prayer that has been heavy on your heart or by graciously saying three words that might not seem like much at first, but carry all the strength to keep you standing: I love you. The Christian life isn’t made up of filler days in between the highs and lows, but every day is an opportunity to take a walk through the woods with the One who created you.