by William Harwood

“The bears are hungry this year.” Or so claimed my mom. We sat on the front porch of a cabin outside Black Mountain, North Carolina, as a crisp autumn day gave way to a chilly autumn evening. Mom sipped Chablis as I carbo-loaded for the twenty miles or so I planned to do in the morning. "Are you still running tomorrow, dear?" she asked.

“Of courth,” I replied, lisping from a mouthful of pasta. “Trail running'th my thing. It’th how I meditate.”

Mom scowled. Blame it on one Gary Larson cartoon too many, but she had half-convinced herself I stood in mortal danger of being eaten by a wild animal. Specifically, a black bear. It didn't help that an early morning plumber had spotted a sow and two cubs near the cabin just the day before. “Why don’t you meditate sitting down for once?” she suggested.

“That doesn’t work for me,” I replied. “I only meditate kinetically. And preferably while sprinting over roots and rocks somewhere deep in the woods.”

Charlie don’t surf, and mamma don’t trail run. She didn't get it. I tried to explain. “You see, mom, extreme physical effort combined with intense mental focus generates a trance-like condition conducive for the reception of epiphanies."

Mom sighed and drank some more wine. I kept on going. “That’s why I have to run. The fate of planet Vearth depends upon it.”

My mom grokked the reference. I’m the creator of ‘Mission to Vearth,’ an online ‘world game’ that kids in after-school programs use to learn science and math. Basically, my job is to run around the woods dreaming up fictional computer viruses that attack a virtual world. Actual kids then protect that planet with their play. It’s a goofy way to make a living, but, then again, I’m a goofy guy. “But aren’t you worried about bears?” she asked. I shook my head. “It’s a well-known fact that bears never attack vegetarians. They consider us natural allies in the bitter struggle against hunters who encroach upon their habitat.” My ‘facts,’ of course, were nothing of the sort and my mom wisely ignored them.

“Well, what about the tree?” she continued. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

'The tree' referred to a dead oak which stood less than a nine iron from the cabin's porch. Deep gouges, claw marks, had been ripped in its side. They started about eight feet up and stopped about level with my face. In the semiotics of nature, it was a sign that read: 'Private Property-Keep Out.'

“No,” I replied. “The claw marks don't bother me either.” “And why not?” she demanded.

I deadpanned it as best I could. "I am not a tree."

The Internet is amazing. Even in a rustic cabin equipped with one (barely) working toilet, my wife was able to go online and pull up sites about Ursus americanus. Not that she typed Latin into the search engine. No, the Mrs. was in cahoots with my mom and googled ‘black bear maulings’ instead. Still, since I needed to digest the pasta, I sat down and digested the info as well. The following are some of the more interesting tidbits.
• Most black bear attacks are on solo individuals. (Oops. That was bad one. I would be running alone.)
• For some unknown reason, western black bears are much more aggressive than their eastern counterparts. (That was a good one. I would be running on the mild side of the continental divide.)
• Unlike grizzlies, black bears won’t lose interest if you play dead; they eat their prey immediately. (I stuck that one in the ‘bad’ category.)
• Black bears can climb trees and outrun even the fastest humans. (Ditto.)
• If attacked by a black bear, fight back with everything you got: sticks, rocks, fists, teeth. (Another bad one. I didn’t rate my chances in any wild-and-wooly smackdown too highly.)
• A sow with cubs can be highly aggressive and very dangerous. (Aw, man.)
• According to a wildlife biologist named Kim DeLozier, there have been 37 fatal black-bear attacks in the United States. (Unnerving and most unfortunate for the victims, but I chalked up the fact that I was 38-years-old to mere coincidence.)
• The Smoky Mountain National Park recorded just one attack last year, and less than a dozen each year in the past decade. This despite the fact that the park attracts 10 million visitors a year and is home to an estimated 1,800 black bears. (Ah, that was the fact I was looking for! Set the alarm early, dear, I’m going running!)

The morning dawned flawlessly blue and halfway up the mountain I realized two things. Number one, my hometown trails in Washington, DC, would never seem the same. Bless Rock Creek Park for being there, but the paths that crisscross its 1,700 acres simply don’t compare to a single summit run in the South Appalachians; good grief, those mountains are mesmerizing. And that brought me to my to second revelation. It wasn’t just the beautiful scenery that was different, or even the height of the hills-two thousand foot climbs instead of two hundred-but the run itself. For the first time in my life, I was in woods in which an unarmed human was not the automatic alpha critter of the local food chain. Bears were about. True, the chances of actually encountering one were remote, and encountering an aggressive one remoter still, but that’s not the point. The point is that such an encounter was possible. And this possibility made the run seem more like an initiation into an ancient club, the society of humans who have braved the wilderness because there was something inside-food, gold, medicinal plants, beaver pelts, what-have-you-that frankly was worth the risk. I sure came back out with what I was looking for-epiphanies, those mysterious mind nuggets of divine inspiration that help me get the kids of the world playing together as one to save planet Vearth.

But getting back to my mom’s question: was I scared? C’mon, honestly now. Well...okay, maybe once. I had reached the 4,300 foot ridge line and found a narrow trail that zigzagged through a heath bald. Unlike the tall stands of oak, birch, and fir on the slopes below, the heath bald was all mountain laurel and rhododendron. The jagged branches of the former looked like barbed-wire tangled against the sky, and the waxy green leaves of the latter had grown together over the trail. Together they formed a tunnel full of twists and turns that, at no point, offered a view of anything more than a few yards dead ahead. It was here that I thought about mamma bear and her two cubs. Should they be around the next bend and out looking for breakfast, I might bump into mamma bear’s butt and be considered ‘juuuust right.’

I successfully fought my urge to turn and go back and instead pressed on to the end of the tunnel trail. There I found a small clearing that was a good place to pray. And then I saw the outcrop. It was just on the other side of a tangle of rhododendron. I wiggled my way through and made it to the rock. It turned out to be an overlook, and I sat there for quite awhile, enjoying the new view that life had just presented.

William Harwood is not an actor though he plays one in real life. Word on the street says he runs through the woods in search of the moral high-ground. Help him save Vearth at www.KineticCity.org .