The next morning, our fourth day began with a slow ascent up to and over a Mt. Guyot spur. At Deer Creek Gap, Page heard then pointed out a male Blackburnian Warbler, his orange breast pulsing like a wind-blown ember when he turned toward the mid-morning sun. As the day warmed, a slow drift of white, fair-weather clouds floated single file over the Little Pigeon River drainage to the northwest. Near Ross Knob a Broad-winged Hawk whistled its piercing, high-pitched call while barely tilting a wing as it wheeled higher and higher on the rising, warm-air cushion of a thermal.
Late in the afternoon we turned onto the sidepath leading to Cosby Knob Shelter, home of the "huge bear." As we approached camp we noticed two fresh and highly conspicuous bear scats, exceptionally large bore and less than a hiking stick's length apart. The nearest one, super-sized and heaped high enough to trip small children, was larger than any we had ever seen. The second-piled to the size of a small cairn, enough to fill a child's beach pail-was larger still.
We assumed the crap cairns were the work of one really big bear doubling down on his territorial calling card. They were posted, easy-to-read, no-trespassing signs that said: "This is my territory, this is my shelter. All rights and privileges associated with said territory and shelter, including any and all foods or foodstuffs, are hereby reserved for the sole and exclusive hunger of the proprietor-the one and only mighty maker of these two plop piles. This visual and olfactory document is signed, notary-sealed, and enforced by the megafauna dimensions of these droppings and a size Pleistocene paw upside your head. Get lost or get bloody."
We shrugged our packs off in front of the shelter. As we turned to inspect its cleanliness, we noticed paper scrolled to fit a slot of fence link to the right of the door latch. "WATCH OUT FOR THE BEAR" was boldly printed at the top of the first of three large pages. We retrieved our packs, carried them inside and began to read. A young Texan named Daniel had spent the previous night alone at Cosby. Early in the evening, he hauled his pack with all his food and cooking gear down the open slope in front of the lean-to. He cooked a simple, one-pot supper and enjoyed the low slant of sunshine still clearing the trees. A few moments after he set his pot aside to cool, an "incredibly huge bear" swaggered slowly downslope, woofing and tooth popping, blocking the rookie backpacker's straight-line retreat to safety. The young man made a short, adrenaline-fired run around the bear and back uphill to the shelter. He neglected to grab his pack before the half-circle sprint.
His meal had obviously cooled enough for the "500-pound thief"; the bear wolfed it all down and licked the pot a good 20 feet further downhill. The beans-and-rice dish tasted like more. The bruin immediately turned his appetite to the pack, sniffing and clawing, biting and ripping and rifling until he had devoured all the remaining grub including five big Snickers bars wrappers and all. After both food and bear were gone, Daniel reclaimed his ruined pack and returned to "Fort Cosby." That night the marauder padded back and forth beside the shelter's fenced front at least a half dozen different times, sniffing and pacing and all but growling "more Snickers."
The self-described novice backpacker had planned to hike the AT for another three or four days after exiting the park. But now, with his food supply gone down the bear's gullet, his pack trashed, and his spirits lower than his boot liners, he would walk to Davenport Gap with a light pack and empty stomach … and head home.
By the next morning, his youth had distilled the previous day's ignominy and anger to optimistic reflection. The last two lines of his lengthy post script read: I'll be back next year, smarter and stronger. Daniel L., Beaumont, Texas.
We investigated the crime scene. All that remained were a few scuff marks, some gooey-looking shreds of Snickers wrappers, and a couple of half-chomped baby carrots. We walked back to the bunker, keeping the door open for dignity's sake, and read the shelter journal to gain whatever advantage we could from the bear's habits and temperament. An unlikely pattern quickly emerged. The beast, always alone and very big, "was one seriously bipolar bear." Nearly every day before signing their trail names-Zen Bootist, Heyduke, Hemlock Hank, Hot (herd of turtles), Limp-along Cassidy, and the like-the AT backpackers described the bear they came to call Fat Albert one day, Cosby the next. Fat Albert was always characterized as "big but tentative, unaggressive, nervous, a mild-mannered beggar, an easily run off loiterer." Cosby was consistently described as "a huge King Kong bear, monster-beast bear, mega-beast bear, the biggest bear I've ever seen, a bad-ass alpha male on steroids, 450 to 500 pounds and every ounce a bully, etc."
On Cosby days, which received the lion's share of the ink, the bear was a woofing, false-charging, jaw-popping intimidator, who would quickly misappropriate all unfenced food for his immediate use. No journal writers boasted of driving the Cosby-day bear completely off, not even one of the rock throwers. He left when he was good and ready, after all the food had been forted up for the night behind the chain-link fence. On Fat Albert days, however, loud yells and clanging pots and pans were all that was required to run the big but skittish bear down to the edge of the clearing.
The swinging pendulum good bear-bad bear routine had begun in April. Throughout all of the entries, there was but one bear-alternately docile or demon, one night mousy, the next night mean. The bipolar bear theme occurred so regularly that a few of the contributors began a small war of potshot words, accusation followed by escalating rebuttal. One gadfly upped the ante by suggesting that Cosby nights were caused by Fat Albert campers.
After finishing our day's ration of gorp, we headed down to the nearby spring to filter a gallon of cold cooking and drinking water. Three-quarters through our fourth and final Nalgene bottle, Page grabbed my pump arm and said, "bear" in a voice low but tense. An impressively large male bear stood at the bottom of the clearing-silently watching, head slightly raised, nose working the air. I glanced back at our packs inside the shelter; Page had closed and latched the door on her way out. Good move.
Brown muzzle, skull flat on top between his cupped ears, the bear looked to his right toward the other side of the opening for a second, then quickly returned his gaze to us. His impassive brown eyes, seemingly too small for his bucket-sized head, gave nothing away like a good poker player. But the tilt of his round face and his tensed body and his mind behind those inscrutable eyes were all alert. I stopped pumping and studied our visitor, tried to read his body language for clues to his identity, Cosby or Fat Albert.
"What do you think, Cosby or Fat Albert?"
"That's a big bear," I said, "but he looks a little nervous and tentative to me. I think our mooch for the night might be mousy bear Fat Albert."
"Yeah, I think so too."
The black bear advanced a couple of yards, stopped, looked over his shoulder, tested the breeze again. Eyes firmly fixed on the imposing bear, I finished pumping while Page gathered up the filter bag and full bottles. We decided to postpone supper for half an hour, enough time, we hoped, for him to leave. The bruin we wanted to be Fat Albert shambled forward, but did not closely approach the shelter, and did not pace back and forth in front of the fence demanding power bars in exchange for peace and quiet. If we were reading him right, our bear du jour was Doctor Jekyll, meek and mild and easily run off.
I watched as Al slipped away like a large puff of black smoke blown through dense foliage and dark shadow. We took a half-hour snooze as planned. The bear was still out of sight when we arose from our rest. Less than a minute after we started supper, a large male bear reappeared at the bottom of the clearing, just to the right of center. At first he just stood there, head raised and hesitant, looking about uneasily, drawing large drafts of air through his moist black nostrils. Trying to see what was for supper with his sense of smell. Before we verbalized our thoughts, that our beggar was still mild-mannered Fat Albert, he abruptly scooted to his left along the lower edge of the opening without apparent cause for his skittishness.
We scanned the woods. Down and to the left, still 10 feet in the forest, the shelter's secret loomed large in the double circle-single image of our binoculars. An older male bear-longer, heavier, and higher at the shoulder than the first-shuffled toward the opening and bear number one. He was well upholstered and huge for a Southern Highlands bear, big and burly and black as an obsidian boulder. We didn't need binoculars to read his mood; it was as unequivocal as a cocked pistol. He entered the opening with a slow muscular strut. The exaggerated roll of his shoulders and sway of his massive head declared that he was the real deal, the dominant bear. His size and demeanor guaranteed us he was about to drive off beta bear and take charge of all holdups and handouts the shelter offered. We now knew the source of Fat Albert's uneasiness. It was the journal's "monster-beast" Mr. Hyde, Cosby. He was a physical force. He made us grateful for strong steel.
The two black bears engaged in a territorial skirmish along the bottom of the opening only 25 to 30 paces in front of our see-through shield. They were fighting for the right to ransack our packs if given the split-second chance. We felt like we were participants in one of those public television nature shows: two spawning-run salmon anxiously watching two Kodiaks fight for sole possession of their pool. Winner take all.
The ultimate outcome was never in doubt. Alpha bear's bulk and his slow, cocksure physicality convinced us he would quickly rout beta. But to our surprise, Fat Albert held his ground, unwilling to yield any more turf a second sooner than necessary. Head lowered and swaying in rhythm with his slow, flat-footed strides, Cos narrowed the distance. Albert's feet remained motionless, but his head and heart weren't ready for battle. His body began a sideways wince. Making a great show of woofing, grunting, and jaw chopping-all bluff and bluster-Cosby closed the gap to a little more than his length, then paused, providing Al ample time to play his part in their dance of known dominance. Beta blinked, submitted. He cowered down and further sideways, muscles tightly bunched, ready to spin halfway around and sprint. Alpha male false charged, hurling his bulk and mock ferocity toward the empty space where Fat Albert had been, stopping with little hops on his front paws.
Heavyweight bear number one disappeared into the long darkening shadows of the sheltering forest. Sumo-weight bear number two turned his back on the subordinate bear, possibly an ursine insult, and rumbled back into the middle of the ring, claiming victory for the fatherland of his incessant hunger. And waited to see if he had won a white-towel TKO. But when he finally swiveled around to check the continuance of his success, the contender was back in the lower right corner of the clearing, in the exact same spot as before. Round two. Cosby lowered his head and locked eyes onto his opponent the way a bull signals a charge. He moved in much faster this time and false charged with a laborious gallop as soon as he closed. Al cringed down and sideways again, clearly showing submission and his intent to scram, which he accomplished with an astonishing speed and agility that belied his usual lumbering gait.
King Cos suddenly funneled his anger and frustration into a classic display of displaced aggression: a hard-wired explosion of red-hot ferocity intended to intimidate without actual combat or injury, at least to bears. The dominant male wheeled and charged in quick bursts of fury. He whirled and whacked all the target-appropriate vegetation within range in a stunning exhibition of speed, agility, and big-stick power. He popped shrubs and small saplings like they were speed bags, hammered larger saplings like they were heavy bags. He battered them all into bent or broken submission with surprisingly fast blows thrown in combination from both of his long-clawed front paws. His combustive rage, an innate choreography rehearsed and honed over geologic time, was quickly spent.
Cosby did not strut back to the middle of the ring immediately after his show. This time he stood near the forest's edge, blowing hard from his exertion and staring in Albert's direction. Aggressive mega-beast glared at what we assumed was mild mega-beast for a long moment before slowly moving back to the middle of the lower part of the clearing, once again claiming the shelter and its attendant rights to all the grub he could beg or bully.
Fat Albert had to thumb his nose one last time for dignity's sake; after all, how hard could it be to slap some flimsy and defenseless foliage around. But he fooled no one. He had probably witnessed the same spectacle: an awesome flaunting of assault-weapon firepower. Round three would lead to ripped flesh and blood if Cosby caught him, and he with all his old black bear culture and knowledge knew it.
The challenger nonchalantly shuffled back out into the opening, but not as far out as before. The champion tensed with promised violence. He was through with all courtesies: all tooth-popping posturings, false charges, martial arts attacks against supple flora. He rocked back slightly and took off, legs pumping, without bluff or sound. Fat Albert didn't bother with cringing submission; he hauled freight to save his hide, a rushing black blur, front legs stretching out low to the ground like a chased cat's. Cosby pursued him through the forest's parting green curtain and out of sight. The alpha male's speed reinforced unsettling knowledge: bears are easy to underestimate, impossible to outrun or outfight if one really wants you, an unarmed human, for an easy meal.
After several minutes the victor was back in the lower part of the opening, suddenly appearing-as even large animals so often do-as if he had popped up from the Earth. I tied the horseshoe-shaped latch down with a rope so he couldn't knock it back up, inadvertently or otherwise. He approached the shelter. Our trust in the strength of the wire weakened as he advanced. Bad boy Cos stopped 6 feet from the fence. The reverse zoo effect was now overwhelming. He stood there, a silent and watchful wall of muscle, his emotionless brown eyes concealing his cunning and stealth and proprietary willfulness. He looked right at the cold supper between us, sucked in its bland scent, then turned and walked away, familiar with the futility of the fence.
Up close, King Ursid of Cosby Knob Shelter appeared as big and bulky as the journal accounts claimed. Already familiar with black bear weights provided in various mammal guides, and familiar with fear's exaggeration, my guess was lower than most in the shelter journal. I guessed he weighed between 450 and 475 pounds. But it was just a guess and it was just June. A fall-fat Cos could easily weigh well over 500 pounds by October if the year's berry and hard mast crop were plentiful.
The night now officially belonged to Cosby. Our new larger and far more aggressive raider rumbled into the shadows, but remained in sight. When we looked up from our meal a minute later, he was gone. No movement, no sound. The forest had closed the door behind him. We relaxed, but only slightly. We figured he was still down there in front of us, his nose on high alert and scenting for the slightest hints of new food. But for all we knew, he could be behind us, waiting to bluff the mobile buffets off the backs of late arrivals.
A little before seven, a tall, slender young man pulled up to the shelter and unshouldered his pack. We told him everything he needed to know: the Texan, the journal accounts of the bipolar bear, the territorial dispute. His calm questions and thoughtful comments betrayed only a slight concern, not much more than a realization that his cooking and movements had to be tempered with good judgment.
James, who was section-hiking the AT two weeks per year, told us he had skipped Tricorner Knob Shelter and had passed a heavily loaded northbound hiker-a middle-aged man, immediately unfriendly-about 3 miles back. He asked if the man had stayed with us at Tricorner Knob the night before. We told him everyone we had met, both northbound and southbound, had been friendly, and that we hadn't seen the man he described. The three of us now knew one thing about the surly man: he either came up a sidetrail or was making bootleg camps in the woods along the AT.
(Continued next week)
