Baxter State Park
Maine
Chimney Pond Campground, in the shadow of Mount Katahdin. We have our dinner and relax for the evening, sitting by the pond with some other hikers, swapping stories with Ranger Mark, mostly Mark’s stories. Our food bag is already hung on the bear line, a wire suspended some eleven feet above the ground.
How do you get your food up eleven feet in the air? You use the heavy, unwieldy 12-foot-long hooked pole which is lying on the ground nearby. This is a fun game.
Your food bag is quite weighty, given that you have included your toothpaste, chapstick, medications, soap, trash, sunscreen and anything whatsoever that may have an odor, anything that, to a bear, screams “EAT ME!” You hook this load at one end of the 12-foot-long pole and, holding the other end, snag the barb on a smallish J hook affixed to the elevated, horizontal cable. You are trying to keep your end of this comically clumsy pole from getting tangled in the brush, poking yourself in the crotch or shredding your partner’s face off. This pole with the heavy food bag on one end is now wildly unbalanced and it keeps tipping over, and therefore, you keep tipping over. It’s quite a show. Someone should be playing the accordion and a tin whistle. The bear around the corner who is watching this vaudeville act, patiently waiting, is laughing her ass off.
