Bonnie the Bear

 
So, I continue to kill time while Time kills you; and there being no use in the United States of America for my life-saving knowledge; and from the clear lack of reader interest in yesterday's approach to my unique knowledge of Angels, I thought perhaps an animal story might be better accepted; so thought I would tell you the story of Bonnie the Bear.
 
The reason I am still alive today is the many backpacking trips of a month or more I took during my forties, fifties and early sixties.
 
Finally, sadly, the psycho-fascist American government and psycho-fascist American people got wise to the rise in my health accomplished on those hikes, and on my last such trip I was harassed incessantly day and night, sought out even by government helicopter, and finally a threat of murder by government pigs decided for me that long duration backpacking was, for a time, no longer a functional health plan.
 
My best plan since having been deprived of my beloved wilderness has been to defeat American psycho-fascism, which I have done, and having chopped that tree through I am waiting for it to fall.  That's what I mean when I say I am killing time while Time kills you.
 
During my during my forties I was living in that city with a homosexual soul, San Francisco, and each summer I would load my pack with as much food as I could and still hoist it on my back without help, and I would go on wonderful adventures far from squealing queers and other mean-spirited Frisco citizens.
 
I would walk down Hyde Street from Pine and to the bus depot and catch a bus to Merced, and then another bus to Yosemite Valley, then I would climb out of the valley on the switchback trail near the famed waterfall, and then hike my way some 150 miles north, and come out fit as a fiddle a month or more later.
 
It was an arduous climb out of the valley, taking me from between four to six hours, my pack being so heavy I would stop every ten-twenty yards to sit on a boulder to rest.
 
One summer I got to the top and put my pack down, and with my hardwood Japanese practice sword in hand for limbering-up exercises I took a little stroll to relax after the climb; and when I turned I saw that a huge golden mother bear was teaching her two cubs how to rob backpackers, using my pack as a classroom.
 
That big, beautiful bear was Bonnie.
 
I raised my wooden sword over my head in Samurai style and ran toward Bonnie the Bear with a good imitation of a fencer's yell.  Bonnie was a bit taken aback but she snapped at my feet once or twice; and there at that point developed a Mexican standoff between us.
 
I knew if I hit that Bonnie the Bear with my stick I would be toast, and Bonnie knew if she tore me up with tooth and claw she would be toast, that the rangers would hunt her down and kill her, that being the law of the National Park known by all the bears who live there; so she backed off; and I picked up my pack and began my northward hike, feeling proud of myself and not knowing Bonnie the Bear was following, following, following just out of sight behind me, her two cubs, Frisky and Fun, tagging along behind her.
 
It is my custom when I backpack to go where other people do not go.  This is not difficult because most people stick to the trails; and experience tells me if I camp within earshot of psycho-fascist Americans those psycho-fascist Americans will torture me, their enslaved audible mental telepath, all night and all day.
 
So after an hour or two I found a most beautiful, isolated island in the middle of Yosemite Creek, and I set up a nice first-night camp there, cooked a light supper, smoked a joint, and began to get reacquainted with the constellations I had created over the years; The Great Fox, which  I know from their art the Egyptians also saw, and which I also call That Old Fox Jesus, and a constellation below the feet of the Fox called Halloed Mary, and The Cowboy with a Cigarette Guarding the Pass to Sirius, to mention three.
 
After an hour of pleasant recollections about the love between space and I,  I got myself naked, climbed into my sleeping bag and drifted off to backpacker dreamland.
 
Being an experienced backpacker I had hung my pack from the limb of a tree, and I awoke just before dawn to see that pack being bounced up and down by Bonnie the Bear, who was standing on the limb and working the pack off; and then the pack fell with a thud a few feet from me, and as I got out of my sleeping bag, standing there naked in the early dawn, around the bend comes Bonnie the Bear at near full gallop, so I decided to retreat.
 
(Don't hold that against me, Dear Reader.  Retreat can sometimes wisely avoid defeat, which America should have learned decades ago in its war against me.)
 
So I retreated to the other side of a tiny stream that wandered along the sandstone floor of my camp, and thinking noise would deter Bonnie the Bear from showing her cubs how to rip my pack open with one claw as if it were made of tissue paper, and how to eat my dates, plastic baggies and all, I stood there, naked fool in the morning sun, banging on a pot with a spoon.
 
When Bonnie the Bear had finished with my pack, very kindly not ripping my sleeping bag to shreds, she turned her attention to me, pasty naked man banging on a pot.
 
She walked over to a tree and stood on her hind legs and dug the claws of both forepaws into the bark.  It seemed to me she was standing twelve feet tall, and she was flexing her muscles so that she had wings like Arnold Schwarzenegger before he went to seed, and she looked me right in the eye, then she smiled, then she ran those claws down that tree sending shredded bark flying, and with her eyes and her telepathy she said to me, "Do you really want to hit me with that stick?"
 
Then she gathered up her cubs and led them on to their further education.
 
That's the story of Bonnie the Bear