Life on the edge
It is precisely one week ago today that I was nearly involved in a high-speed accident happening directly in front of me on the highway headed north. Today I had a different unexpected brush with danger.
I was hiking in a state park that I quite like (hiking pictures coming later), the one adjacent to my dear friend R-ka, aka Former Neighbor Girl, and about an hour from my car when I saw a largish orangeish golden-brown dog loping not far in front of me on the trail ahead. Kind of labrador-sized, if shorter, with pit bull ears. As I was walking along scanning the trail ahead for its owner, I realized that it didn't run like a dog. It ran like a cat. It ran a lot like my own, much (much) smaller, orangeish golden-brown cat, in fact. Just as these thoughts were occurring to me, it heard me walking, stopped, turned its body perpendicular to mine, and turned its head back to face me. And I saw that it was a mountain lion. It's funny, all the years I spent hiking in northern California I was pretty attuned to the possibility of mountain lions being nearby, and there was this one trail intersection in one of my favorite parks in Oakland where every time I ran or hiked through it I was sure that a mountain lion was about to leap out of a tree and onto my back. But I never saw or heard or smelled anything remotely like a mountain lion. And here, not even thinking about it, was one right in front of me. I didn't feel a rush of fear or anything, just thought "huh, that's actually a mountain lion." Before I had a chance to raise my arms and look bigger and menacing (Step One of "attempting to ward off a mountain lion attack"), it stared at me for another few seconds and then slunk off the path and down the hill.
There was a jogger headed my way, and I told him what I had just seen, and we stood and waited for about five minutes and then went by the spot together, talking loudly. He was carrying a little knife, precisely for the purpose of fending of mountain lions, actually. He'd seen a jaguar once in Belize, and we compared notes (jaguar = scarier, it seems). When telling R-ka about my sighting over tea about a bit later, she convinced me that I should now always hike with pepper spray. Which I always think of as an anti-rape kind of thing, but apparently is also pretty useful at warding off large territory-being-enroached-upon-and-pissy-about-it cats. I wonder if they have post-Christmas sales...
I was hiking in a state park that I quite like (hiking pictures coming later), the one adjacent to my dear friend R-ka, aka Former Neighbor Girl, and about an hour from my car when I saw a largish orangeish golden-brown dog loping not far in front of me on the trail ahead. Kind of labrador-sized, if shorter, with pit bull ears. As I was walking along scanning the trail ahead for its owner, I realized that it didn't run like a dog. It ran like a cat. It ran a lot like my own, much (much) smaller, orangeish golden-brown cat, in fact. Just as these thoughts were occurring to me, it heard me walking, stopped, turned its body perpendicular to mine, and turned its head back to face me. And I saw that it was a mountain lion. It's funny, all the years I spent hiking in northern California I was pretty attuned to the possibility of mountain lions being nearby, and there was this one trail intersection in one of my favorite parks in Oakland where every time I ran or hiked through it I was sure that a mountain lion was about to leap out of a tree and onto my back. But I never saw or heard or smelled anything remotely like a mountain lion. And here, not even thinking about it, was one right in front of me. I didn't feel a rush of fear or anything, just thought "huh, that's actually a mountain lion." Before I had a chance to raise my arms and look bigger and menacing (Step One of "attempting to ward off a mountain lion attack"), it stared at me for another few seconds and then slunk off the path and down the hill.
There was a jogger headed my way, and I told him what I had just seen, and we stood and waited for about five minutes and then went by the spot together, talking loudly. He was carrying a little knife, precisely for the purpose of fending of mountain lions, actually. He'd seen a jaguar once in Belize, and we compared notes (jaguar = scarier, it seems). When telling R-ka about my sighting over tea about a bit later, she convinced me that I should now always hike with pepper spray. Which I always think of as an anti-rape kind of thing, but apparently is also pretty useful at warding off large territory-being-enroached-upon-and-pissy-about-it cats. I wonder if they have post-Christmas sales...
posted by Pangea at 8:06 PM
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