Yeah, going out to chase a black bear away is one thing. A grizzly is something else. Even a relatively young one. That being said, I probably would have done something similar. And it wouldn't have been my worst decision. Good reminder. And good reading.
That's a good recommendation! I have that same response to nonfiction in the evenings. The Book of Trespass and Windswept both passed muster in that respect, which is nice. But I do still like losing myself in a good story at the end of the day. I enjoy non-challenging TV, so an evening book has to compete with watching old episodes of Grey's Anatomy (which I'm sure is full of scientific flaws! being basically a soap opera). I'm so glad to know you like Becky Chambers, too :). I only heard of her this year -- could always use more science fiction recommendations!
I definitely woke up at 5 the next morning with a minor "what was I thinking oh my gosh that could have gone bad really fast" feeling.
Thanks for recommending my work! :) I hope that the online Hammett piece will inspire folks to follow your lead in subscribing to the print version of this terrific magazine.
Oh my! I'm glad this turned out okay for you! I suppose that bear was more interested in the chickens and didn't want to share with you, and glad that you ran off to leave her to dine in peace. I wonder if our brains are so foggy these days that snap decision-making doesn't always work the way it should.
Long ago when I was getting my geology degree, a couple of grad students working in Alaska were attacked by a grizzly. One of them had some decent scrapes but they got lucky and neither were too seriously injured. We were headed to Montana for field camp, with one of the pair amongst our TAs. He made light of it all, but also made sure that we knew what to do in case of a bear encounter (which never happened). Rattlesnakes showed up a few times - including at the first outcrop we stopped at on the first day! Our professor picked it up with a stick, and we knew then that he was probably a madman. Little did we know that by the end of six weeks mapping rocks through Montana, Idaho, and Washington we'd all be a bit mad too.
That sounds like a story that needs writing up, being a bit mad after mapping rocks (also I never get bored with reading about geology).
That sounds like quite a bear encounter! I will wonder a lot more now about what people think after they encounter bears. There have been a number of run-ins here in the last 2-3 years with people picking huckleberries or hunting. The disturbing thing is that in some of those cases spraying with bear spray didn't seem to deter them (one teenager picking huckleberries sprayed a bear 17 times). I'm not sure what to do about that, since bear spray has been the go-to for such a long time.
Glad you are okay. The desire for control underpins does much of what we do as humans, doesn’t it? And recognizing the futility of control is often an important step in learning to have fulfilling relationships with those around us.
I am also glad I'm okay! Though really I feel like there should have been consequences for my poor choice. However, the worst consequence to me would have resulted in death for the bear so I'm really glad that didn't happen. She just ... told me to go away. (I might never forget what being growled at sounds like.)
100 Awesome-Nerd-Points awarded for quoting Becky Chambers. #scifinerdsunite
I'm glad you're OK after facing down a bear with nothing but a flashlight (I see nothing wrong in phrasing this story in ways that make you sound like a total badass). And that is a HUGE bear, so - I'm glad you're ok.
Eva Holland wrote a lot about humans meeting bears, last year & the year before. If you're feeling some residual Yikes-ness over all this, I bet she'd be a good one to chat to. (I was chatting with her about your newsletter a few weeks ago, so you're in her thoughts.)
And I'm going to circle back to scifi. I loved the original "Alien", the first in the series, because it was all about what happens when you step too far into the wilderness, too confidently, with zero caution or respect for the interoceptive signals coming from your gut and breathing and heart and everything, because you are Rational and Know The Rules and Nothing Bad Can Happen If You Assert Your Rights And Take Control. But as you say, at the local scale, the wilderness is forever uncontrollable. It does its thing, and we play along as best we can.
Oh yay! I don't talk much about my sci fi habits here but now I might more since I now there's someone reading it sometimes who likes those kinds of media :). I wasn't all that into Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (I liked it fine but found it too cheerful? Or something? I wanted more of the main character's back story maybe?) but a local friend told me it was really worth reading the second book in the series after listening to me wax on about how much I love Murderbot (I LOVE MURDERBOT). Becky Chambers definitely gets my 2nd place for writing plausible AI that isn't just a Star Trek Data rehash!
If 45-year-old moms with an unreliable knee can be badass I'll take it ;) It was still awfully dumb, though. I could have just stayed inside and called someone.
I would love to read Eva's pieces. I should have an alert or something for her work because I've always enjoyed and admired it so much, but somehow the lack of social media (and also slipping out of the travel writing sphere) means I miss a lot. I had a good time hanging out with her and Tom Swick and Jim Benning at the AWP conference a few years back. Reminded me of why travel writers in general are such great people--down to earth, curious, generally good outlook on life without shielding themselves (yourselves) from what's deeply flawed.
That is a fantastic assessment of Alien. I've never thought about that before (also applies maybe to Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora"?). Maybe it extends into the whole "humans conquered nature so all these physiological responses are just leftover from evolution and they don't really mean anything." Also, I haven't seen those movies in maybe decades but my son was asking about them recently so I might have to go back to them.
Ahhh! Aurora, the scifi book that made me Feel Big Stuff for the first time in absolutely ages. (I'm a huge KSR fan, but even so, the section about the journey home, the AI of the ship quietly looking after its passengers, somehow really got to me - along with the idea that other worlds are just too biologically hostile to settle, which landed on my heart like a ton of bricks. Humanity: forever in solar system lockdown, eeesh).
Re. Eva's work, I was going to post this in my original comment, but figured it might be a bit triggering considering recent events? https://cottagelife.com/outdoors/lessons-from-a-bear-attack/ So that's a huge trigger warning. It's not graphic, but it's intensely descriptive...
>>"Maybe it extends into the whole "humans conquered nature so all these physiological responses are just leftover from evolution and they don't really mean anything."
Oooh! Hmmm. I'm going to have to think on that for a bit...
And Alien - I loved the mystery of it so much. I just didn't want it to be explained. Leave it unknown, Ridley! It's why I like Jeff VanderMeer's work, and other New Weird scifi. Unsettlingly, Eerily Unknowable is the new "it's all just a big equation (and what we need is a Hero, Preferably A Manly Man, to come solve it)" in scifi, and I am here for this sea-change in bucketloads.
It was the thing about other worlds being too biologically hostile--and, importantly, in ways impossible for humans to detect--that really got me. I was working on my walking book at the time I read it and thinking a lot about evolution and how difficult it would be for humans to survive off of Earth and what it means to have coevolved with this biosphere, making us dependent on it. KSR is a lot of fun. I haven't read the latest, but should pick it up. (RE "forever in solar system lockdown," see also: how The Three-Body Problem changed how I think about space exploration.)
Thank you! Can't wait to read it. And I see she has a book, awesome!
I have never read Jeff VanderMeer (don't hate me) and hadn't heard of Eerily Unknowable but am also here for the sea changes. Science fiction and fantasy are *so much better* than they were when I was growing up. To find N.K. Jemisin after a teenager-dom of reading endless Piers Anthony under the desk in Spanish class because that's most of what was available was such a joyous relief. (I tried to read Snow Crash recently and got bored, unfortunately, though imagine I would have liked it at the time.)
Haha, oh boy, ditto on Piers Anthony - I hoovered them up for years, for the wild & wacky ideas which he's always brimming with, and then gradually became aware of how...unfortunate all his books were regarding the women characters, and then it was a long, ugly slide into All The Nopes going forward.
Jeff VanderMeer wrote the book that was adapted into this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation_(film) It's a trilogy of books, all of them concerned with the transformative effects of alien Nature, and they're all deliciously weird and unsettling. The first in particular. Think you'd enjoy and be creeped out in equal measure.
And KSR's latest, "The Ministry Of The Future", is terrific because it tackles climate change head-on. It's already getting economists arguing over its ideas, same way NASA paid attention to the Mars trilogy because of the tech he suggested might be useful. I'm hopeful it's going to do a lot of good, as well as enthrall a lot of people (first by scaring them: the first chapter is an account of a wet bulb event, and it's a terrifying read)...
I'm now imagining everyone else reading our comment thread here and thinking "oh blimey, look at those two nerds. I thought this Substack was about walking?" 😂
This Substack is about everything! I mean, kind of -- the commons is really what it's about, which encompasses so much about how we're able to live our lives, or restricted from doing so. I personally think that science fiction is very relevant to that thinking.
You got it, Piers Anthony, all the Nopes. It was all I had for a long time, though, except for Patrica C. Wrede's books, which are fantasy and infinitely better. And Dune I guess. Foundation books had the same sexism problems.
I will happily order VanderMeer's books :) Keeping a healthy fiction pile keeps me happy.
I heard that KSR works diligently with scientists for his books. But now you mention wet bulb (yes, this year was the first I heard that term!) and I feel like I should read it immediately or avoid it forever.
Octavia Butler's the one who leaves me creeped out but wanting more in equal measure. That's good praise.
I'm terrified of heights and even reading your story here I can feel my body wanting to curl in a fetal position. Absolute fear does tend to override any claim to rationality really quickly, doesn't it? I remember once having a true panic attack on a remote Scottish island for no real reason except I was momentarily alone, looking out at the sea, suddenly convinced my husband had fallen down a cliff just out of sight (in my slight defense, I was 6 months pregnant and somewhat irrational at the time). I could have made any number of dumb choices in that moment; I wasn't in control of my own mind.
So now I have to really think about this (and no, absolutely, not offensive!). I always carry bear spray and try to make noise when hiking, which is frequently, because we're taught that bears are generally shy of humans and prefer to avoid us. It helps them if we let them know we're coming rather than surprising them silently. So I was partly thinking that the same logic would apply--I just assumed the bear was trying to get into the coop (hadn't occurred to me it was already in there) but I also assumed it was a black bear, since nobody has ever seen a grizzly in our end of town. I just almost never assume "grizzly," I guess, though that will change now. Anecdotally, they seem to be more aggressive than black bears.
It also hadn't occurred to me it could be a female with cubs, which was what the police were worried about (though wouldn't it have taken some chickens back to its cubs?).
I have only seen moose a few times: in Newfoundland, when I gained immediate respect for how much damage they could cause to pretty much anything, including a human; and hiking in Glacier National Park a couple years ago, when they were settled down in grass just off the trail and a bunch of people--including my friends who live here and absolutely should know better!--were hanging out taking pictures of them.
The real question is, should I have told Alexa?! (Or Google, since that's the thing we have in our kitchen.)
I hadn't heard of the fungi movie either -- glad this person mentioned it to me! He's got a kid studying mycology, evidently, which sounds like a lot of fun in this day and age with so much research around about it.
Be careful, Nia. I couldn't ... bear ... to lose you.
Ha ha 🐻
Yeah, going out to chase a black bear away is one thing. A grizzly is something else. Even a relatively young one. That being said, I probably would have done something similar. And it wouldn't have been my worst decision. Good reminder. And good reading.
Glad to know I'm not alone :)
Hi Nia! Merlin Sheldrake's book is great. Often in the evening, nonfiction puts me to sleep, but his book kept me awake and turning pages.
Also, I love Becky Chambers's work!
Also, for what it's worth, don't beat yourself up too hard re the bear encounter. We all think more clearly in hindsight and after a night's sleep!
Thanks as always for your writing; it's a highlight of my week.
That's a good recommendation! I have that same response to nonfiction in the evenings. The Book of Trespass and Windswept both passed muster in that respect, which is nice. But I do still like losing myself in a good story at the end of the day. I enjoy non-challenging TV, so an evening book has to compete with watching old episodes of Grey's Anatomy (which I'm sure is full of scientific flaws! being basically a soap opera). I'm so glad to know you like Becky Chambers, too :). I only heard of her this year -- could always use more science fiction recommendations!
I definitely woke up at 5 the next morning with a minor "what was I thinking oh my gosh that could have gone bad really fast" feeling.
Your words, as always, are too kind.
Thanks for recommending my work! :) I hope that the online Hammett piece will inspire folks to follow your lead in subscribing to the print version of this terrific magazine.
I hope so too! Your pieces have been excellent. And of course it's always a delight to see Chris La Tray in there.
Oh my! I'm glad this turned out okay for you! I suppose that bear was more interested in the chickens and didn't want to share with you, and glad that you ran off to leave her to dine in peace. I wonder if our brains are so foggy these days that snap decision-making doesn't always work the way it should.
Long ago when I was getting my geology degree, a couple of grad students working in Alaska were attacked by a grizzly. One of them had some decent scrapes but they got lucky and neither were too seriously injured. We were headed to Montana for field camp, with one of the pair amongst our TAs. He made light of it all, but also made sure that we knew what to do in case of a bear encounter (which never happened). Rattlesnakes showed up a few times - including at the first outcrop we stopped at on the first day! Our professor picked it up with a stick, and we knew then that he was probably a madman. Little did we know that by the end of six weeks mapping rocks through Montana, Idaho, and Washington we'd all be a bit mad too.
That sounds like a story that needs writing up, being a bit mad after mapping rocks (also I never get bored with reading about geology).
That sounds like quite a bear encounter! I will wonder a lot more now about what people think after they encounter bears. There have been a number of run-ins here in the last 2-3 years with people picking huckleberries or hunting. The disturbing thing is that in some of those cases spraying with bear spray didn't seem to deter them (one teenager picking huckleberries sprayed a bear 17 times). I'm not sure what to do about that, since bear spray has been the go-to for such a long time.
Glad you are okay. The desire for control underpins does much of what we do as humans, doesn’t it? And recognizing the futility of control is often an important step in learning to have fulfilling relationships with those around us.
I am also glad I'm okay! Though really I feel like there should have been consequences for my poor choice. However, the worst consequence to me would have resulted in death for the bear so I'm really glad that didn't happen. She just ... told me to go away. (I might never forget what being growled at sounds like.)
100 Awesome-Nerd-Points awarded for quoting Becky Chambers. #scifinerdsunite
I'm glad you're OK after facing down a bear with nothing but a flashlight (I see nothing wrong in phrasing this story in ways that make you sound like a total badass). And that is a HUGE bear, so - I'm glad you're ok.
Eva Holland wrote a lot about humans meeting bears, last year & the year before. If you're feeling some residual Yikes-ness over all this, I bet she'd be a good one to chat to. (I was chatting with her about your newsletter a few weeks ago, so you're in her thoughts.)
And I'm going to circle back to scifi. I loved the original "Alien", the first in the series, because it was all about what happens when you step too far into the wilderness, too confidently, with zero caution or respect for the interoceptive signals coming from your gut and breathing and heart and everything, because you are Rational and Know The Rules and Nothing Bad Can Happen If You Assert Your Rights And Take Control. But as you say, at the local scale, the wilderness is forever uncontrollable. It does its thing, and we play along as best we can.
I say again: glad you're ok. :)
Oh yay! I don't talk much about my sci fi habits here but now I might more since I now there's someone reading it sometimes who likes those kinds of media :). I wasn't all that into Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (I liked it fine but found it too cheerful? Or something? I wanted more of the main character's back story maybe?) but a local friend told me it was really worth reading the second book in the series after listening to me wax on about how much I love Murderbot (I LOVE MURDERBOT). Becky Chambers definitely gets my 2nd place for writing plausible AI that isn't just a Star Trek Data rehash!
If 45-year-old moms with an unreliable knee can be badass I'll take it ;) It was still awfully dumb, though. I could have just stayed inside and called someone.
I would love to read Eva's pieces. I should have an alert or something for her work because I've always enjoyed and admired it so much, but somehow the lack of social media (and also slipping out of the travel writing sphere) means I miss a lot. I had a good time hanging out with her and Tom Swick and Jim Benning at the AWP conference a few years back. Reminded me of why travel writers in general are such great people--down to earth, curious, generally good outlook on life without shielding themselves (yourselves) from what's deeply flawed.
That is a fantastic assessment of Alien. I've never thought about that before (also applies maybe to Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora"?). Maybe it extends into the whole "humans conquered nature so all these physiological responses are just leftover from evolution and they don't really mean anything." Also, I haven't seen those movies in maybe decades but my son was asking about them recently so I might have to go back to them.
MURDERBOT!!!!!!! Love love love love love
I love Murderbot so much!
Ahhh! Aurora, the scifi book that made me Feel Big Stuff for the first time in absolutely ages. (I'm a huge KSR fan, but even so, the section about the journey home, the AI of the ship quietly looking after its passengers, somehow really got to me - along with the idea that other worlds are just too biologically hostile to settle, which landed on my heart like a ton of bricks. Humanity: forever in solar system lockdown, eeesh).
Re. Eva's work, I was going to post this in my original comment, but figured it might be a bit triggering considering recent events? https://cottagelife.com/outdoors/lessons-from-a-bear-attack/ So that's a huge trigger warning. It's not graphic, but it's intensely descriptive...
>>"Maybe it extends into the whole "humans conquered nature so all these physiological responses are just leftover from evolution and they don't really mean anything."
Oooh! Hmmm. I'm going to have to think on that for a bit...
And Alien - I loved the mystery of it so much. I just didn't want it to be explained. Leave it unknown, Ridley! It's why I like Jeff VanderMeer's work, and other New Weird scifi. Unsettlingly, Eerily Unknowable is the new "it's all just a big equation (and what we need is a Hero, Preferably A Manly Man, to come solve it)" in scifi, and I am here for this sea-change in bucketloads.
It was the thing about other worlds being too biologically hostile--and, importantly, in ways impossible for humans to detect--that really got me. I was working on my walking book at the time I read it and thinking a lot about evolution and how difficult it would be for humans to survive off of Earth and what it means to have coevolved with this biosphere, making us dependent on it. KSR is a lot of fun. I haven't read the latest, but should pick it up. (RE "forever in solar system lockdown," see also: how The Three-Body Problem changed how I think about space exploration.)
Thank you! Can't wait to read it. And I see she has a book, awesome!
I have never read Jeff VanderMeer (don't hate me) and hadn't heard of Eerily Unknowable but am also here for the sea changes. Science fiction and fantasy are *so much better* than they were when I was growing up. To find N.K. Jemisin after a teenager-dom of reading endless Piers Anthony under the desk in Spanish class because that's most of what was available was such a joyous relief. (I tried to read Snow Crash recently and got bored, unfortunately, though imagine I would have liked it at the time.)
Haha, oh boy, ditto on Piers Anthony - I hoovered them up for years, for the wild & wacky ideas which he's always brimming with, and then gradually became aware of how...unfortunate all his books were regarding the women characters, and then it was a long, ugly slide into All The Nopes going forward.
Jeff VanderMeer wrote the book that was adapted into this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation_(film) It's a trilogy of books, all of them concerned with the transformative effects of alien Nature, and they're all deliciously weird and unsettling. The first in particular. Think you'd enjoy and be creeped out in equal measure.
And KSR's latest, "The Ministry Of The Future", is terrific because it tackles climate change head-on. It's already getting economists arguing over its ideas, same way NASA paid attention to the Mars trilogy because of the tech he suggested might be useful. I'm hopeful it's going to do a lot of good, as well as enthrall a lot of people (first by scaring them: the first chapter is an account of a wet bulb event, and it's a terrifying read)...
I'm now imagining everyone else reading our comment thread here and thinking "oh blimey, look at those two nerds. I thought this Substack was about walking?" 😂
This Substack is about everything! I mean, kind of -- the commons is really what it's about, which encompasses so much about how we're able to live our lives, or restricted from doing so. I personally think that science fiction is very relevant to that thinking.
You got it, Piers Anthony, all the Nopes. It was all I had for a long time, though, except for Patrica C. Wrede's books, which are fantasy and infinitely better. And Dune I guess. Foundation books had the same sexism problems.
I will happily order VanderMeer's books :) Keeping a healthy fiction pile keeps me happy.
I heard that KSR works diligently with scientists for his books. But now you mention wet bulb (yes, this year was the first I heard that term!) and I feel like I should read it immediately or avoid it forever.
Octavia Butler's the one who leaves me creeped out but wanting more in equal measure. That's good praise.
Wow, that is some classic Rocky Mountain stuff, though I am *amazed* that you emerged from the grizzly encounter without even a scar of your own!
Agree with this wholeheartedly: "Living in bear country is a trip, a rush, a conundrum, a privilege and a responsibility." Well put!
I'm terrified of heights and even reading your story here I can feel my body wanting to curl in a fetal position. Absolute fear does tend to override any claim to rationality really quickly, doesn't it? I remember once having a true panic attack on a remote Scottish island for no real reason except I was momentarily alone, looking out at the sea, suddenly convinced my husband had fallen down a cliff just out of sight (in my slight defense, I was 6 months pregnant and somewhat irrational at the time). I could have made any number of dumb choices in that moment; I wasn't in control of my own mind.
So now I have to really think about this (and no, absolutely, not offensive!). I always carry bear spray and try to make noise when hiking, which is frequently, because we're taught that bears are generally shy of humans and prefer to avoid us. It helps them if we let them know we're coming rather than surprising them silently. So I was partly thinking that the same logic would apply--I just assumed the bear was trying to get into the coop (hadn't occurred to me it was already in there) but I also assumed it was a black bear, since nobody has ever seen a grizzly in our end of town. I just almost never assume "grizzly," I guess, though that will change now. Anecdotally, they seem to be more aggressive than black bears.
It also hadn't occurred to me it could be a female with cubs, which was what the police were worried about (though wouldn't it have taken some chickens back to its cubs?).
I have only seen moose a few times: in Newfoundland, when I gained immediate respect for how much damage they could cause to pretty much anything, including a human; and hiking in Glacier National Park a couple years ago, when they were settled down in grass just off the trail and a bunch of people--including my friends who live here and absolutely should know better!--were hanging out taking pictures of them.
The real question is, should I have told Alexa?! (Or Google, since that's the thing we have in our kitchen.)
I hadn't heard of the fungi movie either -- glad this person mentioned it to me! He's got a kid studying mycology, evidently, which sounds like a lot of fun in this day and age with so much research around about it.