While Selling Yowah & Koroit Opal I Was Bear Bait

This was a terror-filled Yowah and Koroit opal sales trip to New Mexico. !Upon entering Taos, New Mexico, one faces the sweeping vista of a sloping valley framed with high pinion pine flocked hills. The towering mountain range draws winter skiers in droves. The isolation and poetic beauty of the area also draws artists and jewelers who buy opal. The town has a sleepy look of a village working hard at growing; at least lengthwise along the length of the highway and intermittently upward onto the forested foothills. Northern New Mexican style pueblo/hacienda homes dot the gradually climbing upward hillside. One of the four topmost homes was to be my bunk for the night. Little did I know that this was to put me in harms way.My gracious hostess loves her nightly u-the-mountain walk and invited me to drop my albatross-like burden of gem and rock laden sales luggage to walk with her. I thought a brisk walk along the roadway would be refreshing. Roadway? Heavens no. Straight up the very steep hillside through rough brush and scratchy pinion needles. We STRODE with quick ardent steps accompanied her two dogs and my wheezing and gasping sounds. We were over 7,000 feet above sea level. I tried to hide these obviously out of shape pantings with a bit of opal banter. The good hostess she was, Jeanette joined in the effort to hide my embarrassment with plenty of volume and syllables. There was another more distant sound that caught my ear as I huffed and puffed my way valiantly a few strides behind her. It troubled me. It twigged a tingle of fear and recognition from my memory of years in Alaska. I wanted to ask if there were bears about these hills but was so determined to keep up with her athletic and practiced pace that in an instant, my short-term memory circuits emptied the question from my belabored mind. My body cried for mercy. I admitted to the obvious and suggested she continue on at her own pace while I caught my breath and enjoyed the view. Jeanette showed me to a sort of half way summit, and said she'd be back in twenty minutes and jogged off with her canine friend sprinting along by her side. Three minutes of a splendid sunset with an increased oxygen supply that I gained by drawing long deep breaths, and I became aware of my circumstances. I would have a devil of a time finding my way back to the house without Jeanette because I could see that the path we took crossed many other trails made by horses and paths beat out by fit hikers (I was convinced I was the only unfit hiker that had ever attempted this slope) had worn into the hillside. I was musing that dusk would be here in no time when. what was that horrific WOOOUGH!? So base and vibrating? So CLOSE! Much closer than when I'd first heard it while hiking earlier with Jeanette.I froze fully aware of the adrenaline rushing through my limbs. The bear story that Kay, my new Santa Fe friend, had so vividly described to me two days ago came flooding in along with the adrenaline. My 57-year-old eyes strained to see into the scrub below me. A bird was circling above something to the left further down the mountainside. I looked around and called with mock calm for Jeanette. The only answer I received was another WOOUGH like a question and this time a little to my right, still below me, and closer still. I started to sprint under and between a couple pinion pines back the way I had come, and found I couldn't choose between three trails and that my legs were quivering with exhaustion from the earlier "ego effort" I'd made to keep up with my younger companion. I refused to panic. "Stop this nonsense and calm down," said my inner voice with what I thought was a tremor of fear in it. I re-evaluated the situation. I bolted toward the tallest tree and tried to use the adrenaline rush to spur my jelly legs into the strength they needed to boost me high into the tree. They failed. My butt was hanging low and my emergency inspired calf muscles were dead. Wait a minute. This is not how it is supposed to be. Fear was supposed to spur you on to great physical feats to save yourself and it wasn't happening! The brittle branches were breaking under my weight and on second look the tree was awfully damned short! I dropped to the earth from that tree (it wasn't hard as it was only a three foot drop) and bounded (I wish!) more like stumbled, to the next taller tree. My vision was tunneled and focused and all around me seemed surreal and dreamlike-just like in my nightmares but the pain of the sharp branches scraping my skin and the pounding of my heart kept me aware this was the real thing. Whatever I decided to do at this moment would determine my fate: death by bear attack or safe return. I opted to climb the tree.I made it up pretty far. Now what? I yelled for Jeanette. I figured maybe her approach with her two dogs would scare off the "bear". The shout didn't get Jeanette's attention but it seemed to put a note of anger into the next immediate WOOOOOOOUGH! The bird was still circling something and by watching the bird I could see that "that something" was making a zigzag accent towards my perch. I could tell by where the bird was and by the direction the nightmare sound came from. I began to test the wind, wondering which way my scent, my full-of-fear scent, was wafting. That's when a good strong breeze, and it was a breeze only, swayed my now fully perceived as scrawny bush-like escape ploy. This wasn't a tree; it was a spindly big bush. What a sway. Nothing solid and sturdy about these limbs. If this breeze could bend my perch, fancy what an angry, probably hungry bear could do. Why, it was gonna snap in a heartbeat, my last heartbeat! Or, I would be catapulted out of the branches like a slingshot. To avoid the latter I entwined my legs and arms around several branches to reinforce my hold. The tree and I were one. I was unable to pull myself any higher up and cast a hopeful glance at the dim trail behind me before I screamed JEANETTE again. I felt my only hope was that her dogs would dissuade the attack. Or perhaps the bear would be confused as to which bit of dinner he should grab, the tough old scared bird in the tree or the dogs or (yes, I even would sacrifice Jeanette) my younger, more tender, hapless hostess. I prayed for the bear's indecision in menu choice, panic at being outnumbered, or the dogs, something, anything that would confuse the bear and change its present course. I vaguely realized I had my cell phone hooked on my denim loop and could envision me calling 911 hysterically yelling that I was on the hillside somewhere in a pinion tree. I loosened my right hand so I could at least use the phone like a metal club on the bear's nose once he took my right leg that was hanging much lower than the rest of me. I practiced a kick and didn't dislodge myself from the tree. Then I practiced being very, very still. I thought of my grandchildren. They shouldn't have to know how their Grandma Barbara exited their lives. I tried to still my thinking, too, so I would have a fighting chance. I was listening for the sound of a very mismatched combat coming and thinking that I didn't know if I could feign death as he mauled me about like I had read and heard about so much from bear attack survivors in Alaska. No regrets about my life crowded my thoughts except one stupid mental moan about my having come all this way to possibly die by bear and I hadn't made even one damn sale all day in Taos. The bear sound was really close now and I could hear it coming directly at me, too. I grasped at all the possible straws: I said a prayer, I bathed myself in white light, and I wished it wasn't so. I gripped the tree tightly. Then came the recognition of another sound: the sound of the purposeful, fit striding footsteps of Jeanette, not a bear. I dropped out of the tree, not without tearing bits of me here and there, and assaulted her with bear questions. She had been unaware of the sound and neither were the dogs but the bear was downwind from them. We left post haste with dogs that didn't seem to sense a problem alongside and a hostess who sensed perhaps her HOUSEGUEST had a problem. Personally, I thought the paths she chose were leading us right into furry jaws but felt we had a chance if the bear attacked the dogs. I had no trouble keeping up with her now. My hostess admitted that there had been rumors of occasional bear droppings but that there had never been any incidents reported. "There are elk here on the hillside though and it is rutting season," she said casually as we entered the safety of her home. The next day my skin stung from all the cuts and scratches, one half of my $250 Designer Native American turquoise earrings was left in that pinion tree, and EVERYONE who bought from me got a discount.As I shared my story I learned that the mountain jay is a bird that always circles above coyote and bears and locals told me that there had been a couple of bear incidents recently but they were keeping it quiet because it was the beginning of the tourist season! So human nature is as we saw in the movie Jaws. Don't warn the tourists of danger. Get their money first.

To see what I do and why I do it go to www.ParchedEarthOpals.com and www.outbackgems.com