There are two things that will darn near ruin a good backpacking trip: getting a ticket while driving to or from the trailhead, and having your car broken in while parked at the trailhead.

I figured I was close to the first, getting a ticket for speeding, when a Wyoming highway patrol officer pulled me over last week just south of Thermopolis. What saved me is this officer was an outdoorsman, and upon seeing my loaded pack and dogs in the bed of the truck, asked me where I had been backpacking. I told him me and my border collies had camped in Grand Teton National Forest, west of Moran Junction. He knew the area, and asked if I had come across any Grizzlies. "Not this time," I said, then mentioned how last year one came near my tent at 3:30 am, and I am still trying to understand my dogs staying quiet in the tent.

The officer then told me his Grizzly story, from when he was camping a little west of were I went. He said he doesn't bring his Australian dingo with him anymore, for fear it will lead a bear right to him and he would have to try to stay ahead of the dog and the bear on its heels. He told me he just goes hunting with his brother now, who is fat and could be easily outrun.

I was a good listener, and the patrolmen sent me down the road with just a warning, for which I was darn sure grateful, especially since he had stopped me in a construction area, where the fines are doubled.

I have to admit to having mixed feelings about not coming across any Grizzlies this year, sort of a feeling of having missed something exciting and memorable, because those nighttime encounters with what sounds like huge bears scrambling in the woods make such good stories, the kind that pretty much tell themselves.

The flip side of the mixed feelings is that I am fortunate to have escaped an unknown disaster. Thoughts of this nature come towards evening, when you begin to think what really could happen with yours truly camped alone right in the middle of a Grizzly Recovery Area, where the ranger at the local forest service office said "there are a lot of bears, right there where you are going." (",stupid", is what he seemed inclined to follow with but didn't say), but they usually try to avoid people."

I mean as it gets dark and you are physically and mentally tired, it is just about inevitable that you begin going over in your head just how much protection that nylon fabric really is - safe like the safety of lying on your back in your little tent in the path of the bulls of Pamplona. It also crosses your mind what a damn fool you surely are to be doing this anyway, that all the people with sense are inside something hard-sided.

But as long as you have taken the necessary precautions, which is hanging all of your food and smelly items (toothbrush, suntan lotion, bug spray, etc.;,) up high in a tree, and as long as you have not camped in a typical bear travel area - along the margin of a forest meadow, by the side of a lake, on a ridgetop, and as long as there is not recent bear scat or diggings in the area, a night in grizzly country boils down to one thing: is there a noise out there, or is there not. If there is not, you can sleep.

Once the night is past and you slept through most of it, the worries of giant beasts that can scrap off your face with one swipe of their long claws vanish with the light of dawn, to be replaced by thoughts what a rugged and independent soul you surely are, heightened by the hope of the sun rising and the boil in your blood from two or three cups of strong coffee.

I think Teddy Roosevelt had this courage thing figured out, when he said that

"There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid."

The thing is is that if there is something you are inclined to do, to just get out there and do it, while you still have the time and the health, that as long as you are smart, and careful, things usually turn out just fine. And I can tell you that my nights camping in Grizzly territory seem like the most authentic wilderness experiences I have had, because as Doug Peacock has said, true wilderness is a place where the grizzly walks at night.

But it is another quote by Teddy Roosevelt that is more of the reason I go out to the places I do, and that is this:

"The worst of all fears is the fear of living."

Sometimes it is important to remember that no matter how much comfort and security we surround ourselves with, the number of days we have are still limited, and we need to make the most of them, according to our passions and affections and doing right. Writer Anne Lamott put it this way: ". . .we're all terminally ill on this bus -- all that will matter is memories of beauty, that people loved you, and you loved them, and that you tried to help the poor and innocent"

And so can you sort of understand why I was out there, and great it was, after getting a good night's sleep, to walk out to the crest of that hillside at dawn, to see the Aspen forest go from dim to light, standing in the trees with their new leaves, the size of silver dollars, the hue of pale, waxy spring green, and then seeing the first wildflowers of the season beginning their bloom. I witnessed all this in the foreground, while in the distance the majestic Teton range transformed from bluegrey to lavender to yellow,

There is just nothing like experiencing that alone, in the shadow of the great bear that surely is nearby. But I was alone only in the sense of being free of human company though. In actuality I may have the best of both words, solitude and kindred spirits at my side, the company of my two border collie friends, who love these wilderness adventures the same as I do.