Summertime in Bear Country

There is a list of known fatal bear attacks on Wikipedia. It lists the victim's name, age and gender along with the location (looks like Sarah Palin isn't the only thing that will keep me out of Alaska), and various points of interest about each incident. The list goes all the way back to poor William Waddell in October of 1875, killed by a brown bear at his lumber mill in Santa Cruz County, California.

After a week of rereading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods (highly recommended, by the way), I really should not have looked at this. You may have noticed from my sporadic postings of Bryson quotes that he describes some alarming facts and observations regarding this subject in his book. My bear preoccupation has already reached a boiling point; I've focused on the worst case scenario of being outdoors (um, nothing tops "eaten alive" does it?) in that unhealthy way that makes the relatively rare occurance of a bear attacking a human seem downright inevitable.

One of my favorite things to do is go camping, and obsessing about bear attacks is not exactly going to give me the kind of confidence (or brazen naivete) it takes to sleep through the night in the woods. In the interest of outdoor fun, I'm putting my bear-related research in hibernation mode for the summer, so no more pithy bear quotes until winter, dear readers--I have to preserve the tattered remnants of my poor frail moxie.