7-24-2025 4:50am

Mikę Strzelecki Offers Three Bears: Three Lessons

Lesley Misko Editor

Editor’s Note: Area writers were invited to submit poetry and/or prose to Studio B Art Gallery’s summer project “The Three Bears.” Writers were challenged to respond to the meanings of the words “bear” and “bare,” the Bear Fever sculptures or an aspect or theme from the fairy tale “Goldilocks & the Three Bears.” Their poetry and prose responses will be published in coming weeks in The Boyertown Area Expression digital news site (boyertownareaexpression.town.news). We hope you will enjoy the wide-ranging responses to the challenging theme.

by Mike Strzelecki*

I don’t necessarily believe in the notion of having a “spirit animal,” but if I did, mine would be the bear.

Bears, in different forms and concepts, have woven their way into some very intimate corridors of my life. As a child, I had recurring nightmares about bear encounters, often waking up screaming. My daughter’s first words were “goodnight panda,” which she would say to a panda poster beside her crib every night. I proudly represented the Boyertown Bears in high school sports.

I’ve also had the fortune of having scores of actual bear encounters in the wild, owing largely to my lifelong pursuits of trail running, hiking, and backpacking. These encounters began in my youth, with memories of chasing bears out of our family campsite in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. In my most recent encounter, I was hiking the iconic Rubicon Trail, on the shores of Lake Tahoe, with my wife and friends. We happened upon a black bear playing in the shallow waters along the lake’s fringe. Oddly, it was batting around a tennis ball it found floating on the lake bank. Stumbling upon a bear playing fetch with a tennis ball was not on my bingo card for that day.

While all bear encounters are beautiful and memorable, most of mine have been fairly mundane. They usually involve glimpsing a large, furry butt scurrying away as I move down a trail. Or observing bears feeding on berries in some distant meadow, oblivious to my presence. Routine and harmless.

A few of my bear encounters, however, have been a bit more poignant. Some of them were scary. Others presented unique circumstances, and as such, I have carried them a bit closer to my heart (and memory) as I have aged. In keeping with the “three bears” theme of this essay challenge, here are three bear encounters that have taught me valuable life lessons.

The first bear encounter happened when I was 12 years old. I was charged by a grizzly bear while fly fishing in Yellowstone National Park. I spent most summers in Yellowstone while growing up and was very comfortable navigating the backcountry. My dad and I set out one day to fish the upper reaches of the Gardiner River. We were in a flat meadow area with no trees for at least a mile. The weather was ideal, and I still remember pulling seemingly endless brook trout out of the riffle water with letort hopper flies, meant to resemble grasshoppers that had fallen into the stream.

We decided to head back to the car. I was photographing my dad standing in the creek, holding a stringer full of trout. Nothing but barren meadow all around, framed by distant mountains. I remember seeing movement through the camera lens, something dark and thick. “I think that shrub is moving towards us,” is what I think I said. My dad swung around and screamed, “Grizzly….run!!!!” The grizz was moving at a fast trot directly towards us, maybe 50 yards away and closing in. With no trees to climb, I simply threw my rod and stringer of trout to the ground and sprinted.

I still can hear my dad’s steps behind me, sweeping through thigh-high meadow grasses. No time to look back, just heading towards distant woodland. After about 100 yards, my dad peeked around. He told me to halt. Looking back, the bear was in the stream bed right where I was photographing my dad. I still can picture it standing on his hind legs looking at us. We were in the clear. Later, we surmised that either we were in his watering hole and he wanted us out, or more likely, he got distracted from chasing us when he happened upon two stringers laden with large and juicy brook trout. 50 years later, and I can say emphatically that I have never had such a frightening experience in my life.

This bear encounter taught me one of the most important lessons I still carry with me. Nature is raw and wild and untamed, and can be scary. Respect it. You don’t control nature; it has the upper hand. You are a visitor and should show proper deference as a guest. This bear encounter totally reformulated my philosophy on how I view the outdoors and wildlife.

The second bear encounter happened when I was in my early adulthood. I was trail running with a friend in Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia, scaling Old Rag mountain. We set off from a trailhead near a campsite. Almost immediately, I noticed a black dog cross the trail ahead. We figured it probably escaped from the campground, and decided to catch the dog and find its owner.

As we moved up the trail towards the dog, a second small black dog appeared from the nearby brush, this one much closer. It became clear that we grossly misidentified the loose animals as dogs and were approaching two bear cubs. And from behind the cubs appeared a lumbering mother bear, trodding towards us. We stumbled into a precarious situation that the mother bear was eager to rectify.

What happened next was fascinating. The mother bear chased her two cubs up a nearby tree for safety. They clung about 15 feet off the ground, on opposite sides of the trunk, watching over us. Mom bear was apparently out rooting for breakfast for her kids when we approached, and she returned to her morning chores - scouring the ground for acorns or late-season berries. She hugged the trail tightly and paid us no attention. We just stood on the trail about 30 yards away, observing.

Our game plan was to wait her out. She was not posing any danger, or presenting any signs of being a threat. She was just another busy mom, dealing with two young kids, trying to get them fed. But she would not leave the trail.

After about 15 minutes, we decided we needed to get our trail run back on track. My friend suggested that we bushwhack off trail, and sneak around the mother bear. Now that her cubs were safe, she was more interested in calories than two trail runners. I agreed.

We both stepped off trail to swing a wide arc around her. The mother bear immediately sensed our movement, heeled up, stared us down, and belted out one long, soulful growl. Her message was clear: we were to stay where we were until she was finished feeding. We were on her time, not ours.

Ten minutes later, she collected her two cubs and slowly moved away from us, before disappearing behind a series of large boulders. We could finally pass through.

This encounter captivated me - seeing mom bear in total control of the situation. She had her cubs safely up a tree, she had us pinned back at a safe distance. And she could root for food with little discontent or fear. This encounter taught me that we are just visitors in the bear’s habitat. The woodland is their home, and they are not much different than humans. Like us, they have frequent meals to prepare, kids to contend with, and issues to resolve (like what to do about intervening trail runners).

The third bear encounter happened about three years ago. I was photographing bears at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, just off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This refuge reportedly has the highest concentration of black bears in the United States. It also has the heaviest bears. This is partly because peanut and corn crops are planted on the refuge for the bears to feast on, and they consume copious amounts. Bears at the refuge weigh up to 900 pounds.

If you visit at dawn, just as the day’s light first appears, there are certain sections of the refuge where you can see lots of bears. Sometimes 15 or 20. They languish in the crop fields and cross over the networks of dirt roads. Most pictures accompanying this essay I took from the Alligator River refuge.

During my most recent visit, I was standing on a dirt road, outside my car, observing and photographing a bear that I would put in excess of 500 pounds. It was about 20 yards away. All that separated us was a ditch with a six-foot-wide channel of shallow water.

The bear walked to the lip of the ditch directly across from me and stared, as if posing. It held ground and I absorbed the moment. A few other photographers were watching this behemoth, or tracking other bears consuming ears of dried corn in nearby fields.

One photographer, who was a regular at the refuge, approached me. “Hey, would you mind moving back a few steps?’ he asked. “You are standing where that bear likes to cross the channel and he is waiting for you to leave.” I obliged. The massive bruin immediately proceeded to climb into the ditch, wade across the water, and climb out. He leisurely strolled right past me, almost within arm reach. I could have stretched out and felt the matting in its fur. I could smell him and hear the rocks scrunching under his massive paws. He disappeared into the nearby thicket.

Seeing such a powerful and immense creature so closely was startling and chilling. At no point was I scared, just thankful for such a rare opportunity. I was in awe at the beauty and majesty of the bear. You don’t realize how powerful these creatures are until you are close enough to hear their breath. This bear encounter reaffirmed to me how beautiful these creatures are and how important it is that we continue to accept them as a vital part of our outdoor community.

* Mike Strzelecki is a freelance travel and outdoor writer, and 1981 graduate of Boyertown Area Senior High School. He writes from his house in Baltimore, Maryland. In his spare time, he joins his wife on adventures around the country observing and photographing birds.