Written by Sarah Stupar | May 2020
If you’re a regular reader of this blog you might recognize me as a comedian. If you’ve ever seen my comedy, you’ll know that I am a good ol’ Cranbrook girl who moved to the city to make it big, but had her dreams crushed and got spit back out into her parents basement in Cranbrook. Well, that’s how it felt at the time, but now, in the throws of Covid 19, I can easily say there is no place else I’d rather be.
My initial downward spiral into pandemic related anxiety and fear has been tempered by my daily hiking—and by “hiking” I mean smoking weed and wandering around in the forest. Getting to the top of any hill and enjoying the views brings me a great feeling of calm, and the daily forest jaunts give me the time to write and rewrite my jokes in my head, to work on my act. Right now my main comedic struggle is the question “am I a hillbilly or I am a redneck?” Yes, I was once moved to tears by a Nickelback song, (indicates redneck) but I don’t own any cowboy boots and I can’t ride a horse. Wandering around high in the woods wearing camo sweatpants and a neon orange toque is obviously some big Hillbilly Energy, but suddenly it hits me. I’m wandering around in the forest, in the spring, completely alone and not making a sound: this is DUMB CITY SLICKER energy and I need some damn bear spray.
I used to be absolutely terrified of bears, even though I had never seen a bear, except from the comfort of a car while driving through a National Park. But I knew that the bears were all around us, lurking in the woods. At Wasa Lake during summer camping trips the park ranger would be making the rounds, warning all the campers that the bears were ‘active’ and to “take all the necessary precautions”. I knew what the necessary precautions were of course (no food in the tent!), as I had taken bear safety in Grade Six in preparation for a class camping trip, but it didn’t stop me from having nightmares about bears tearing through our campsite and trying to eat me. And yet, despite all the warnings and bear safety classes, I never did see a bear. I just lived in fear of one day seeing a bear.
I left Cranbrook at the age of 19 and moved to the city of Vancouver to chase my dreams of becoming an actor, and I no longer had to think as much about bears. Every so often a bear would turn up in downtown Vancouver rooting through a dumpster, but I only read about that in the paper. Then I moved to Montreal for University and bears really became just a distant memory. Forest walks were replaced by city meanderings, fear of bears replaced by fear of mugging or sexual harassment.
Around the same time I left Cranbrook my parents did too, and moved to Kelowna, a town so firmly in bear country that it is named after them in the Okanagan language. After living in a real and proper city, where one could simply not find isolation in nature, when I came to Kelowna for a summer visit, I was excited to go for long walks outside. My parents lived right on the edge of town with easy access to the forest. Being a night owl, I was looking forward to finally having the freedom to walk around at night alone without worry, but as soon as I tried it the distant memories of bear attack dreams came flooding back. City fears of sexual predators that lurk the streets were replaced with fears of animal predators that could rip my face off with their claws.
I didn’t want to live in fear anymore! Sure I knew about bear safety, what to do if I saw a bear, but I didn’t know about bears. So I started reading. It turns out that bears are not exactly predators of humans since we actually occupy the same spot on the food chain. We are BOTH apex predators, so it’s not like there are bloodthirsty bears out there craving human flesh. The most prominent danger of course is Mother Bear, and not because she is desperate to slay humans, but because she’ll do anything to protect her babies.
My newfound knowledge of bears served me well the summer I didn’t come back to British Columbia, but instead went on an education program to Garden River First Nation in Northern Ontario. This too was bear country. A lot of other folks there on the program were city girls who had never been camping. The bear safety was reviewed and I felt glad to add my two cents about bears. “They don’t see you as prey” I assured my new friends, “a bear’s diet isn’t even primarily meat”. In fact now I wanted to see a bear. “No problem,” our hosts told us, “We’ll just go to the dump”. We found a Mama black bear and her two babies feasting on trash at the dump. “Waiting for the salmon to return,” insisted our hosts. “Salmon is much tastier than trash”.
As I sat there watching these majestic predators hang out at the dump I remembered reading that if you should ever end up in a violent confrontation with a black bear, that you should try and fight back. Especially if you are a large man and it is a young bear. A person could conceivably give the bear enough trouble that it decides to take off, you know, if maybe that particular bear is a lover, not a fighter. Seeing this mama bear at the dump, she wasn’t actually that big. If she didn’t have her babies I mused I think I could take her. Not that I wanted to, but you know, if it came down to it.
Later that night we watched The Jungle Book. If you haven’t seen it recently as an adult, let me tell you something. Baloo the Bear is a stoner. He is high as heck that entire movie. As a child I had no idea, but now as an adult disciple of Snoop Dogg, my jaw hit the ground when Baloo made his appearance in the film. He wanders into frame singing “well it’s a doobity do, I mean a doobity do, I said a doobie doobie doobie doobie - ” Holy sh*t! This bear is high! “You don’t want to go back to the man village” he insists to Mowgli “they work too hard!” Big stoner energy. Baloo’s main interests in life are eating and floating down the river. Relatable. Just relax and give yourself a good back scratching. I like this bear. In fact my fear of bears finally seemed conquered. Now I just love bears, they are my favourite animal (although only small children ever seem interested in this fact).
Obviously a bear can be a dangerous animal but at the same time, I mean, they’re just hungry. They’re just out there in the woods munching all day on berries and grasses and insects. My fear is gone, but I still respect the bear. I no longer dream of being attacked by bears, I fantasize about coming up on one in the woods and we smoke a doobie together. Then we eat some honey, scratch our backs, and float down the river.
However I’m still going to invest in some bear spray, you know, just in case the bear I meet is a fighter, not a stoner. Bears of course are like humans that way. Each with their own personality, and you never know what you might get.