That One Time I Almost Accidentally Pet a Bear in the Wild: Thoughts on Giving Back to You and the Steemit Community

You read that right; it's not cute wordplay or anything. I quite legitimately almost patted a bear's bum companionably while walking the trails behind my house.

Right, so with that clarified, let me share a day of pictures of the black bears in my area. Spring and summer here in beautiful British Columbia, Canada is a bonanza for them. The grass is tender, there are buds on everything (insert obligatory BC weed 420lyfe joke here,) and the berries are ripening. I don't live in a hermit cabin in the woods or anything — just lucky enough to be surrounded by mountains on one side, a protected nature reserve on another, and river along the third.

Life is good.

 

My little chunk of suburbia transitions from housing to thicket pretty abruptly. About three minutes away, you can be in a chunk of forest that's carefully contained between a stretch of highway and the sprawl of planned communities. It's heaven for walking the dogs. As such, I actually run in to bears a lot. Like, way more than you'd think. I ran a 10k race in our city last week, and the announcer actually went over bear safety before the starting gun.

Murphy spends a lot of time snuffling around the brush. He's like an anteater on crack, but who also has the legs of a cheetah.

Case in point:

 

So when he goes blazing up the trail like his tail in on fire, I don't think too much of it. He's fast as shit, but admittedly, it's a good thing he's pretty, because sometimes he is... well, my boy ain't velociraptor smart, anyways. By the time I usually catch up with him, he's just a tiny hump of fuzzy butt, sticking out of a stump or a bush or down an embankment. He has, for the record, a blackish fuzzy butt.

When I heard a rustle in the bush beside me, I put out my hand to pat Murph absentmindedly and instead I got a snort and all of the bracken flattened towards me as a BEAR spun around and charged onto the path. I know what to do. I know to hold my ground, get big, wave my arms, all that. I'm not going to drag this out — I did all the proper things; I just happened to do them after I yelped and ran fifteen feet. IT'S FAIR, OKAY? Bears are hella big. Disclaimer: this bear is not that bear — I give bears their space. Because getting mauled, and all that.

So why the Steemit shout-out in the title, if this is full of pictures of hilariously fuzzy and slightly confused bears just chilling and berserker dogs approaching lightspeed? Well, because thanks is in order. I am a content person. I love writing, taking photos; grabbing your face and making my eyes your eyes. (What a horrible mental picture...) I know that the people who curate my stuff are the ones who have a direct hand in my success.

Just know, as a tiny (minnow-tiny) thank-you, that I don't upvote my pieces when I upload them, to try to make sure the people who take a chance on me get the biggest payouts.

The amazing thing about Steemit is that if we succeed, we succeed together.

Otherwise, I'm happy to send you an original print, if you like!

All of these photos are my own, taken on my travels all over this pretty blue marble of ours. I hope you like them.