Hunting the Fear Bear

ack when I was 12, my best friend Shane and I spent most of our summer
weekends camping in the thick woods behind my family's farm house. We'd
pitch our tent next to the fishing pond and would spend the weekend in the
great outdoors.

While we imagined we were living off the fat of the land, we were really
living off the larder of my father: Once or twice a day we'd go to the
house, a mere quarter mile away, share a meal with my family, and stock up
on chips, snacks and thermosfuls of sweet iced-tea. On Sunday mornings we
would breakfast at the house for Sunday was the day that my father
ventured into the kitchen to make a batch of his famous (at least among
the Allen clan) biscuits-and-sausage-gravy.

It was one of these Sunday mornings that the great bear hunting incident
took place.

We woke early one morning and set upon the task of fishing. If we were
lucky we could catch a few fish before going on up to the house for
breakfast. It was a peaceful day and we were enjoying the silence until we
were disturbed by the clamor of something moving in the woods. Quiet at
first but increasingly louder, the raucous noise quickly proved to be
nothing than my younger sister, all of seven, traipsing loudly down the
trail from the house.

"Keep it down, will you, we're fishing!" I yelled.

"Fine," she said, sticking her tongue out at the two of us. "Then I won't
tell you that Dad said breakfast is ready." And she turned and tromped
back up the trail louder than before.

As soon as she was gone, Shane and I eagerly started winding our reels in.
Both our stomach's were growling at the thought of the meal to come. Just
as we we're setting our poles next to the tent, we heard a scream that was
obviously Michelle. Shane and I ran down the path, towards the noise,
going just a short distance before seeing my sister who was tearing back
down the path towards us.

"What's the matter?" Shane asked, putting his arm around her shoulder. Her
eyes were wide and wet with tears and she was shaking like the treetops in
a thunderstorm.

"I saw a bear," she sniffled between tears and pointed down the path.
"There's a bear down there."

Now, to teenage boys looking for adventure, the thought of catching a bear
was, well, almost unbearable. Without saying anything, I ran back to the
tent to look for anything even remotely useful to bear-catching. The best
I could do was a fishing pole and an old Army blanket. I raced back to
where Michelle and Shane were waiting. "Okay," I said, "show us where this
bear is."

We walked, slowly but every so stoicly down the road to where the bear was
waiting.

The narrow path curved and angled up. Shane and I stepped carefully,
attuned to every sound. Just at the top of the hill Michelle whispered,
"THERE!" and pointed to a thicket of blackberry bushes.

Shane and I peered into the thicket. Something was in there, that's for
sure, but we couldn't tell what. We were not, however, going to go through
all of this without having *some* story to talk about so we quickly
formulated a plan: Shane would take the fishing rod and I would take the
blanket. We'd approach from two different sides of the bear quickly, to
surprise him, and I'd cover the bear with the blanket and Shane would beat
the poor animal down.

It sounded good. And it worked. Yes, our little plan worked. We had
captured our prey!

Unfortunately, our prey turned out to be a gnarled old tree stump that, we
had to admit, looked like a small bear when viewed from just the right
spot along the path. Of course, we gave my poor sister endless grief for
being afraid of a "little old stump."

We didn't catch a bear that day but we still took something from that
adventure. We took the lesson that much of what we fear doen't really
exist, and if it does exist, it's probably worse in our imagination than
in reality. We learned that instead of running scared just tackle your
fears head-on and you can overcome them. And we still have a great
bear-hunting story to tell.