Nature Trail
It was a fine day in early July, and there was a small group of Boy Scouts out in the middle of the woods, far far away from the nearest road or television set, hard at work unpacking their back packs and setting up tents. They were very excited, because it was their very first time alone by themselves in the woods. If they could make it through the night, they would earn their overnight camping badges.
"But it's not like real camping," Jeremy was quick to point out. "The trails are marked and everything." Jeremy was twelve years old, and he was the most adventurous of all of them. He caught frogs and kept them in large glass jars in his bedroom, and his father had taken him on hiking and canoeing trips in Montana since he was nine. He had been very excited about the adventure, but he was disappointed by how tame and manicured the woods seemed, and he'd spent the entire hike to the campsite boasting about the incredible mountain hikes he'd had in Montana.
"Make sure the food is tied up high enough," Nicholas warned. "We don't want any raccoons to get into it!" Nicholas was twelve years old as well, but he didn't like any of this business. His mother kept him inside, and he was round and soft like a marshmallow. He'd complained about the hike the entire way in, and even now his sides were sore from the unusual exertion.
"We've got a lot to do today," Peter said authoritatively, reading from a clip board. He was fourteen and the oldest, and his father was their Scout Master. He had been put in charge of the troupe for the camping adventure, and he took great pride in his responsibility. He had been quick to demonstrate his knowledge and experience to the others whenever he had the opportunity, pointing out indigenous plants and correlating the trail markers to their map.
Only Jacob never spoke as he set up camp. At eleven years old, he was the youngest, and he'd learned not to get in Jeremy's way or to tell Nicholas to stop acting like such a baby or to correct Peter when he mistook a Smooth Aster for a Heather Aster. Instead, he kept to himself and kept his eyes and his ears open, finding bugs and animal tracks to keep himself entertained.
"Now that camp is set up, the next thing on our list is the nature hike," Peter said. "Pack up all of your survival gear and some food and water just in case, and we'll head out immediately."
"But we've been walking all morning!" Nicholas gasped. "Shouldn't we stop for lunch first?"
"Two miles is hardly a walk at all," Jeremy grumbled. "I wish we were camping in a real forest."
And so, that was how the troupe set out for their adventure. But what they didn't know was that a nasty old grizzly bear lived quite near the place where they'd decided to camp, and wouldn't you know that such a headstrong group of boys would raise such a huge racket as they tromped past that it woke him right up from a very nice nap. And when he poked his nose out of his cave and smacked his lips and yawned just in time to see a group of tasty little children disappear down the trail, he rubbed his paws together and chuckled to himself...
They had been walking for twenty minutes when there was a fork in the trail. The path was leading around the edge of a sharp dropoff that led down into a chasm that was so deep and so wooded that none of them could see the bottom. But now there was a branch in the path that led straight down into the pit. It was narrow and much more overgrown with grass than the path they'd been following. A wooden sign, shaped like an arrow, pointed straight down. It read "Advanced Trail."
Peter and Nicholas tromped right past it, but Jeremy lingered at the edge, looking down curiously. Jacob walked past him, but then he stopped short. He turned and saw Jeremy walking toward the new path.
"Hey!" Jacob said. "The trail's this way!"
Peter and Nicholas stopped short and turned to see what the commotion was about.
"I like this trail better," Jeremy snorted. "We haven't climbed any rocks or gone over any rivers or anything. Maybe this way will be more fun."
"We're supposed to be following the green markers!" Jacob argued. "That doesn't even look like a trail!"
Jeremy looked down the side of the hill. The grass was rather thick along the path. "Maybe that's just because it's advanced," he reasoned. "So all the babies like you never go on it."
"It's on the map," Peter agreed.
Jacob frowned and looked at the sign. It didn't look like all of the other trail signs they'd seen. The lettering was rough and scratchy, like someone had written it by scraping a nail across a piece of wood.
"It joins up with the main trail again after a short distance," Peter said. "You can go that way if you want. We'll meet up with you again further down."
"We're not supposed to split up!" Jacob said, shocked. "What if he gets lost or hurt?"
"I know what I'm doing," Jeremy insisted. "I'll see you guys later." And just like that, he bounced down the side of the hill and into the bottomless foliage below.
Jeremy was thrilled. At last, now he was having a real adventure! It was a rough path all right, rolling up and down hills like a roller coaster, straight through wide, shallow rivers with no stepping stones, and between thick, grasping tangles of trees. At first it was marvelous, but the further he got down his path, the more often he'd find that the path had vanished, and suddenly he wasn't very sure where he'd come from. But then -- aha! -- then he'd spot the next sign, some distance away, pointing him ever further into the forest. And even though it was starting to make him nervous, he kept telling himself that he was having a fine time, and that the others were very foolish to miss out on all this fun.
What Jeremy didn't know was that Peter had been looking at the wrong part of the map when he thought he saw this fork marked, and that the signs hadn't been placed by forest rangers at all.
And so Jeremy's adventure took him at last to the bottom of a ravine so deep and overcrowded with pine trees that it felt like evening time even though he knew it was just before eleven in the morning. He found one last sign marked "Advanced Trail" pointing into the mouth of a cave set into a hill. It was so dark that he couldn't see more than a foot inside.
He hesitated at last, glancing back the way he had come, though of course he could no longer see anything that looked like a trail in that direction, and so he looked the way the sign was pointing. He'd never been inside a real cave before. It was exciting, but it was also kind of scary.
"Ha!" he told himself at last. "As if there could be anything dangerous in a forest like this! Peter said the trails would link up again, and there are signs and everything. They wouldn't make this path if there were really anything scary out here. I bet it's lit up inside and everything."
And so, Jeremy stepped down into the cave without another thought, and he hadn't taken five steps before he'd disappeared quite completely into the blackness. It was quiet in the little ravine for several minutes, until suddenly the cave started making a loud, rumbly, echoey sort of sound, and then POP! Jeremy's backpack shot out of the mouth of the cave like a cork from a bottle and landed a short distance away.
Jeremy himself never came out of the cave again, but a short time later, that nasty old grizzly bear waddled out, grinning and licking his chops. And he was a bit heavier in the belly than he had been before!
Of course, the rest of the children had no way to know what had happened, so they continued on their way without a single care about grizzly bears.
Still, Jacob couldn't help feeling a little worried. "When does the other trail connect with us again?" he asked quietly.
"Just a little further ahead," Peter grumbled. He was annoyed because he'd predicted that they'd find Jeremy's trail again three times already, and each time he'd been wrong.
Of course, Nicholas didn't pay any attention to what was going on. He dragged his feet and groaned and scrunched his face into a pained grimace that made it clear he could not go further. So when the trail passed by a bench that had been set up for weary hikers, Peter walked straight past it, but Nicholas started drifting off the trail and finally sat down on it. The wood creaked and sagged beneath him, but it held, and he leaned back with his eyes closed, panting with relief.
Jacob stopped short again. "Hey!" he cried. "You can't stop here! We have to keep going so we can catch up with Jeremy!"
"You guys go ahead without me," Nicholas insisted. "I can't go any further."
"It's okay, Nicholas," Peter said. "You did good today. Stay here and rest; we'll come back for you later."
Jacob looked down at the ground. There were deep marks in the dirt that led from the feet of the bench to the other side of the trail, almost as if it had been drug across the ground recently. But why would someone drag the bench over to that side, so far away from the path, where the bushes were taller and denser, looming over behind like some sort of monster? Something about it made Jacob uneasy.
"We can't leave him here alone!" Jacob protested.
"He'll be fine," Peter said dismissively. "Let's go. We're almost to the branch in the path."
Jacob hesitated for just a moment, but then he moped along behind Peter.
The other boys were well out of sight by the time Nicholas caught his breath. He was starting to feel a bit put-upon by the other boys and all of this unwelcome adventure. All of these bugs and trees and all of this forced walking! Why, even Peter had said that he did good today! He deserved a break after having to put up with all of this hassle.
So he took his backpack off and set it on the bench next to him. He pulled out his canteen and drank the entire thing, and then he dug around at the bottom for one of the candy bars he'd gotten his mother to pack for him.
Unfortunately, he still had reason to be miserable. When he was walking, at least the bugs had been unable to keep up with him, but now that he was sat still for so long, they swarmed about him, thick and merciless. He swung his arms around like fat hams, sobbing wretchedly and chewing as he tried to fight off their attack.
And then, suddenly, he heard a very low, very deep growly noise, and it hushed him with one startled gasp. His heart raced, and he slowly turned around. But the bush behind him was so thick that he couldn't see anything but leaves and branches. If there was something else in there, he couldn't see it...
SHLOP! While he was distracted, a great big muzzle poked out of the branches and wrapped around his hand. He yelped and looked down, but it was already gone, along with the candy bar he'd been holding. And while he tried to figure out what had happened, a big brown paw suddenly reached out from the branches and wrapped around his face. He tried to yell for help, but he couldn't make a sound as he was pulled backwards into the bushes and vanished from sight. The leaves rustled and made hungry lip-smacking noises, and a moment later --
It was that nasty old grizzly bear again! He wriggled himself free from the bushes where he'd been hiding. His belly was hanging so low that it nearly touched the ground, and he grinned to himself smugly. But then he was stopped briefly by a sudden, violent hiccup. It would take a while for his stomach to settle with all this rich food!
Peter and Jacob marched along in silence. Jacob was uneasy about how small their group had gotten, but at least Peter was still there. He may be bad at maps and identifying plants, but it's very comforting to have an older boy around when you're out in the woods and you've got a creepy feeling that things aren't going so very well.
They were about halfway around the trail, and the path was starting to loop back. Jacob was sure that they just had to get back to their camp and everything would be all right. Jeremy and Nicholas would be there, and then they'd start a fire and have lunch, and then --
The silence was split by a sudden loud CRACK, and then the incessant braying of a large animal of some kind. Both boys stopped short and turned toward the sound, but the woods were too thick and they couldn't see where it was coming from.
"That sounds like a deer," Peter noted.
"No it doesn't!" Jacob argued. "Come on, let's just get out of here!"
"It sounds like it's hurt," Peter said. "Let's go see if we can help it."
"No!" Jacob insisted. "It's none of our business! Let's just get back to the camp before something else happens!"
"Nothing's happened," Peter said. "Wait here if you don't want to go look." And then he left Jacob by himself and ventured deep into the woods.
Peter followed the sound of the braying until he lost sight of the trail behind him, and eventually it led him to a spectacular sight. Of course, it wasn't a deer at all, but that nasty old grizzly bear! But when Peter found him, he was down on his fat stomach with his paws over his eyes, braying pitifully. One of his hind legs was stuck out at an awkward angle, and the jaws of a huge metal trap were clamped around his foot.
Peter balked at a safe distance from where the bear lay trapped, and he thought about what to do next. He had seen the signs posted all along the trail. Hunting and trapping were prohibited in this area; clearly this bear had fallen victim to an unscrupulous poacher. Something had to be done.
"Wait here," he told the bear. "I'll alert the ranger station at once, and they'll send someone down here to get you out of this trap."
The bear seemed to understand what Peter was saying, because he uncovered his face, looked up to the boy, and brayed sorrowfully, as though begging not to be left behind in his anguish. Peter was so moved by this display that he abandoned his plan immediately and decided to take the responsibility for this bear's rescue himself.
"After all," he reasoned to himself as he approached the trap, "I am the oldest boy in the troupe. I should be able to handle something like this myself. Who knows how long it would take a ranger to come and how much pain this poor animal would have to endure? Besides, he seems like such a nice bear..."
The bear stopped braying as Peter stooped down to investigate the trap. He was trying to think about ways to pry it open when he noticed that there wasn't a single wound on the bear's leg. The trap was loose around his foot -- the entire spring mechanism had been removed!
Peter was just beginning to wonder about the meaning of this puzzle when suddenly he was grabbed from behind and swung around. He found himself held tight between the bear's paws and looking up into his grinning muzzle. The bear chuckled deep in his throat, and a thick, fat tongue slopped over his chops...
Jacob waited patiently for Peter to return, but after a while the braying stopped, and suddenly the forest was very quiet and still. Jacob started to feel very nervous and alone. He knew that Peter had told him to wait where he was, and he knew what a bad idea it was to move around when you were out in the forest and you wanted somebody to find you, but when Peter didn't return several minutes later, Jacob started to feel like he was being watched. His nervousness turned into a panic, and suddenly he was running down the trail, back the way he came, as fast as his legs would take him.
He wasn't used to running in the forest, with all of the rocks to trip him and branches to snag him, and he had to walk several times while he was catching his breath, but he never stopped for anything. When he passed by the spot where Nicholas had stopped to rest, he found no sign that the boy had ever been there. Jacob tried to tell himself that Nicholas had just gotten bored and gone back to the camp, but he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that everything had gone wrong.
Needless to say, he was unhappy to find that his suspicions were correct when the campsite came into view and he found that nasty old grizzly bear rooting around in their things! He'd found a way to bring down the bag of food they'd tied up, and he'd gobbled every single thing up. His stomach sagged heavy and low and round like an enormous boulder.
When he heard Jacob coming, the bear sat back on his haunches and grinned. "Hello," he said. "You must be that clever little boy who wouldn't fall for any of my tricks."
"How do you know how to talk?" Jacob asked, understandably surprised.
"Well, I'm a very clever bear," the bear grinned.
Jacob had a bad feeling about this. "What have you done with the others?" he demanded.
The bear opened his mouth and rubbed his belly. There was a soft sound echoing up from his gullet -- Jeremy, Nicholas, and Peter, all crying out for help from the bottom of the bear's stomach.
At this, Jacob became very angry and balled up his fists. "Well I'm not going to fall for any of your tricks!" he insisted. "I'm going to go straight to the ranger station to report you, and they're going to cut you open and let them out!"
"Really?" the bear grinned, sounding very interested. "And how do you suppose you're going to do that? I'm blocking the path to the ranger station. I'm bigger than you and faster than you. And now that all of your little friends are gone -- " He rubbed his belly to remind Jacob where they had gone. " -- I won't need a single trick if I want to catch you."
Jacob frowned because he knew it was true. Even if he knew another way to the ranger's station, the bear would surely catch him long before he got there. But maybe he still had a chance if he could beat the bear at his own game.
"All right," he said at last. "If you've eaten all of the others, then you may as well eat me up too."
"I'm glad you like the idea," the bear grinned. "I've been thinking about what a handsome dessert you would make. Come over here where I can reach you so I won't have to bother to get up."
Jacob did as he was told. The bear lifted him up with both paws, and his feet dangled several feet off the ground as he dangled nose to nose with that nasty old grizzly bear. "Now," the bear grinned, "I shall eat you all up in one great big bite!"
Jacob closed his eyes and cringed, preparing for the worst.
"But first..."
Suddenly, Jacob felt the bear's paws around his ankles, and he flipped upside-down, shaking violently. His backpack slipped off, and then everything in his pockets came raining down. He yelped in alarm and reached out to snatch it in midair, but all he could do was watch helplessly as his pocketknife tumbled out of reach to the ground below.
That nasty old grizzly bear just lifted him up and laughed in his face. "I've eaten enough little boys to know all of your tricks!" he gloated. "You thought you would cut me open from the inside and rescue all of your little friends, but you weren't clever enough this time!" And then he opened monstrously wide and shoved Jacob into his mouth face-first. With one great big gulp, he was gone, and that was the end of the Boy Scout troupe!
The bear licked his paws clean and chuckled to himself about how clever and wicked he was. His belly was stretched round and tight like a basketball, just the way he liked it.
"Welcome to Bear Country, little boys!" he gloated, rubbing his fat stomach. "I hope you have a comfortable stay!" He felt a long walk would do him some good after such a big lunch, and so he tromped down the trail again, humming a growly little tune to himself.
The boys were very crowded and unhappy at the bottom of the bear's stomach. It was hot and wet and very very dark. As they bounced along down the trail, they started to whisper to each other.
"Maybe he'll feel bad about it and spit us out again," Peter said.
"Maybe he'll fall asleep and we can crawl back out his mouth," Nicholas said.
"Maybe a hunter will shoot him dead and cut him open," Jeremy said.
But even as the other children tried to comfort themselves with thoughts of rescue, only Jacob dared to realize that they were finished and the bear had won. But he kept this sad truth to himself.
It may make you feel better if I said that the rangers found the boys' camp and discovered what had become of them and that the nasty old grizzly bear finally got what was coming to him. But the truth is, nothing like that ever happened and the four boys were never seen or heard from again.
And that nasty old grizzly bear still lives in the same spot in the forest, and he still eats all the tasty little children that fall for his tricks and wander off on their own.
How do I know this?
Because that nasty old grizzly bear is me!