You might be a tree-hugger if...

...you almost drive your sleeping friends off the side of a mountain...not because you're tired but because you were trying to ID the conifers on the horizon --or-- you almost wreck your car driving through the big city because you're staring at the red-tailed hawk in the sky instead of the road.

...you assign motifs to your backpacking trips: "I'm cold!" "I'm hot!" "Poop!"

Verbal Assault by a Bear

Why start with the present, when I can go off on a tangent from October 2008, when my ex-boyfriend and I were verbally assaulted by a bear?

October 13, 2008 - Sunday night of Columbus Day weekend. Secluded in the woods. Last campsite at the end of long rutted gravel road. Our only neighbors: a pasture of fenced-in steers. And Schmeau and I were the only fools still tent camping inside bear country, outside the protective boundaries of the national park's strict food storage regulations.