Roy’s eyes focused and the image of the biggest black bear he had ever seen emerged from the darkness, two feet in front of his face. We can excuse a rude bear. They don’t, after all, attend finishing school. Roy Lee of the 140th Quartermaster Truck company would beg to disagree.
Roy had spent a long July day driving a deuce-and-a-half in convoy up the rough new Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek to Summit Lake. The rough road and the long hours left him exhausted. At the end of the day he rolled into his sleeping bag Roy’s eyes closed and immediately he fell fast asleep.
Link to another story “Bears on the Alaska Highway”
Someone shook him. Groggy and more than a bit resentful, Roy roused himself and looked but in the darkness he couldn’t see the culprit. He spoke to the shaker and profanity might have been involved. His tormentor backed off. The shaking stopped and with a final expletive or two, Roy drifted off again.
The shaking resumed, more determined and far more forceful. Roy literally came part way out of the bag into the chilly night air. He sat up, shouting, turning the air blue and trying to make out his new enemy’s features in the darkness. That’s when the image of the big black bear swam into focus, two feet in front of his face.
Roy doesn’t remember the trip from his sleeping bag to top of the tall tree. He knows he made the trip because he remembers spending a long night trying to remember how well and how far bears can climb. It really didn’t matter to the bear. Disgusted, he wandered away into the woods.
At daybreak, perched high in the crotch of an old pine tree, Lee inspected, found himself in good shape except for a stray scrape hear and there. A bit chilly, clad in just a pair of GI boxers, he shivered a bit. He remembered the four-foot trunk with its lowest branch twenty-six feet from the ground and had no idea how he’d managed to scale it. If his buddies laughed while they rescued him, he didn’t remember that.
Twenty-six feet may be a bit exaggerated. And Roy’s memory certainly left out crucial details.
I, for one, forgive him.
I agree. What’s important at the moment is getting up there…after the fact, is when you wonder how.
Very, very well put.