I was on a camping trip with friends in the Catskills area in New York last week. We were camping on the Phoenicia campgrounds for a night. Our camp was surrounded by maple trees, lush green landscape and a small creek. It was so peaceful. During the day we did a small trek, enjoyed sitting on the rocks in the river and absorbed what the nature had to offer.
One of my favorite pastimes is taking pictures of nature and wildlife. I have been to Denali and Yellowstone National Parks, two of the largest parks in the US, unfortunately I didn't get a good sighting of the grizzly bear there. I was sad that even after travelling thousands of miles I couldn't get to see the bear that well. And, here it was, 200 miles from home, in Catskills I saw the bear 30 feet away from me. Was it an adrenaline rush for me? Huh..I was terrified at the first sight of this huge creature and wanted to run away to save myself. I stood very still for a moment, and I knew I shouldn't run. If you run away from the bear the bear will run after you and there is no chance you can outrun a bear. So, considering that I hid behind the bushes keeping an eye on the bear.
Bears have powerful senses and this bear could smell human presence and it knew that I was there. I tried to escape from there and started walking towards my tent. The bear also walked towards me. I was terrified to death. I looked back and saw that the bear got busy looking for food in the trash can. All this took place at 4.00am when I went to use the restroom which was around 100 feet from the tent and this bear was right there fishing for left over food in the trash cans.
When I reached my tent slipping away slowly from the sight of the bear, I told my friends not to step out of the tent. After 10 mins there was another bear near our camp looking for food. He overturned the ice box in the hope of finding some food. The good part was that we had disposed off all food after the barbecue. All that the bear could get was a Hershey's chocolate syrup bottle which it carried along and walked away happily from our campsite. What a relief...huh!!
I took an easy breath, after all my heart was pounding like a horse. I thought that I should have a clicked a few pictures, but in the heat of the moment there was no time to react.
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