I am not a lover of camping. Being outdoors is great, but being home you have a comfortable bed, electricity, the internet, and actual heat. I don’t appreciate the hard ground to sleep on, the repeated meals for the day, the bugs, or the noises of the dark creeping up at me. I especially don’t appreciate the wildlife. 

I was in second grade when my parents decided that we should go on a camping trip to the White Mountains at Lafayette campground. It was the third day of sleeping outside and we had finished dinner at an early time, earlier than anyone else at the campground. My Dad had gone into the tent to change into his PJ’s while my Mom, my Sister, and I sat around the blazing campfire. There was just enough chilliness to need a sweatshirt on. Our tent was placed at the top of a slope looking down at other people’s tents. Everyone started to prepare their dinner, and the meat of hamburgers, hotdogs, and other assortments scented the air. 

My sister and I were too focused on our attempts to light the sticks we found in the forest with the campfire to notice what had been sneaking up on us. All of a sudden, we were startled by our mom’s sudden scream. My sister and I whipped out heads around to find a giant black bear approaching us. Just 20 feet from our campground with a big brown nose and a loaf of bread in his mouth. The bear slumped over like a hungry teenager in need of food. Panicked; all three of us ran for the van. My Mom had jumped into the passenger side first while my Sister found room to squish on top of her to escape. There was no more room for me to get in through the passenger’s side, so I had to walk all the way around. The van was made for people that use a wheelchair and in need for an accessible ramp. Which happened to be on the closest side to me. By the time I got to the other sliding door, my Mom had locked me out, not realizing I wasn’t in yet. My Mom laughed, ¨Sorry Shayla,” as she unlocked the door for me. My heart was racing with fear and my Mom had the audacity to lock out the youngest child. 

As we watched the bear go around to the different campsites, we realized that we had left Dad in the tent without telling him what was happening. My sister said, ¨Wait what about dad?¨ and we all had an “oh, right” moment. The bear was in a campsite two away from us on the other side of the dirt road, not caring at all for anyone in his way. Everyone was blaring their horns and flashing their lights from their car. He kept grabbing food from picnic tables and swiping it into his open mouth. We slowly moved out of the van when the bear started losing interest in their dinners and my Dad walked out looking around for us. My Dad exclaimed, “What, you were just going to leave me in there?” We all stood near the campfire watching the bear strut along with a full stomach from a feast. The entire night was filled with laughter and the different stories we had to tell from our point of view.

My Dad thinks we lured the bear into the campground because we had eaten our dinner early and the fumes grabbed the bear’s attention. This trip truly showed the survival instincts we have in the face of danger. My Dad loves to tell people how we had left him for our own safety, and I love to tell how my Mom had locked me out of the van for her own safety. The story has been told many different ways and through many different points of view, but if we were to ever be put into danger again I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned into a free for all. There are always more black bears out there ready to test it.