Unwelcome visitors--1352 words

Unwelcome Visitors

On the show room floor at Wal-mart, the young inexperienced salesman and I stood in mutually agreed-upon silence as my short Welsh wife marched with determined step around and around, peering at the polyester fabric on the five-man tent with the intense, almost ferocious expression of a serious shopper. Her hard-edged intensity melted and became a soft, radiant smile when she noticed that the Coleman lantern hanging from the tent crossbar was within easy reach for her.


This shopping trip was preparation for our upcoming vacation. We desperately needed to get out of town and away from the smog for awhile.


I’m an arm chair traveler myself and would have preferred to stay at home and watch towering mountains and roaring rivers on the tube, but she had us packed and out of town like the IRS was after us a short time later.


During the hours of travel across flat, non-descript countryside, I couldn’t think of anything but how much I was going to miss my king-sized bed that night. We got to our destination at a campground in the high country of New Mexico and found a nice surprise. The campsites were far apart instead of being tightly sandwiched together like the houses in our overcrowded neighborhood back home in southern California.


Instead of the muggy gray-brown army blanket covering the city we lived in, the cool mountain air crackled with a brilliant blue color and had the fresh smell of pine and sage. The brand new olive green tent was roomy and comfortable with its sturdy aluminum poles and gently slanting polyester walls, but when we were jarred from sleep that night by guttural growls close by in the darkness, it became a clinging garment three sizes too small.


We usually threw out handfuls of sun flower seeds near our tent for large, bushy-tailed gray squirrels to eat wherever we went camping. Those critters were fun to watch while they scampered towards the treat from their hiding places. I didn’t realize the possible danger of doing this during the dry season that was plaguing this southwestern part of the country.
I learned later from a Ranger that any exposed food source, no matter how small, will attract animals during a drought and bears have a keen sense of smell. They can be unpredictable and ill-tempered when food or territory is in dispute and their razor sharp claws can shred everything in their path.


Tangled up in my sleeping bag, I was groggy but instinctively tried to focus my thoughts on prayer as the bear snuffed and pawed the ground outside. Then a second bear showed up. Immediately the two animals snarled defiance at each other in a loud show of mutual hostility inches from the thin tent wall.


Years earlier, as a baby Christian, I heard teaching about Gods’ love and protective care. He was someone you could really count on...if you could believe. I was young and pretty much thought I could do anything. After hearing this teaching, I made up my mind to try trusting Him.


As the growling grew more vicious, my “made-up-mind” seemed to drain out of me and paralyzing fear took its place, diluting the strength of my faith like icy cold cream stirred into scalding coffee.


Accusing thoughts flooded my mind. “Where is your God? He can’t help you now. He doesn’t care!” Everything was happening so fast! I was painfully aware of my wife silently staring wide-eyed at my back and was growing desperate. The weight of my responsibility as a husband to care for and protect her seemed to have increased ten fold in the last few minutes.


I struck my forehead with the flat of my hand in anger and frustration and then slumped on my camp cot, staring at nothing. This “faith” challenge was proving to be more than I could handle.
In spite of my public confessions of trust in God, the old self-sufficient mind-set kicked in. Had to do something....had to help myself! I glanced around the tent, searching for something to use as a weapon. A stray piece of firewood! Anything. There was nothing. I could only sit helpless, trembling and sweating, as Linda looked at me in the gloom with an undisguised expression of terror, silently pleading for help.


I had a little trick that I always used to hold life at bay. It usually worked, but that old “I’ve got everything under control” facade that took me so much effort to perfect, instantly crumbled into ruin before my wife’s frightened gaze. I turned away in confusion before she could see the stark fear in my eyes.


I glanced to my right. One of us forgot to tie off one corner of the green tent flap that hung down to insure sleeping privacy on the side window. I felt a vein pulsing somewhere in my neck as I inched forward to peer through a small triangular shaped section of the zippered mosquito screen outside the flap to keep from looking at Linda. The closely woven threads blurred my vision, but a musky smell assaulted my nostrils. As I heard the scraping sounds of the bear’s paws on the ground in territory-marking gestures outside, I thought I caught a glimpse of the white of an eye.


A lopsided inward bulge appeared in the tent wall right next to me and after a few moments disappeared again. My muscles tensed involuntarily and I caught my breath, not wanting to think about what those animals ate to attain their massive body weight and size. I could only sit in stunned silence as a familiar scripture flashed through my mind, “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress...”


I fleetingly wondered if the Wal-mart warranty we had learned to trust over the years would cover the shape the tent was going to be in when this was all over. Suddenly it grew quiet outside. Too quiet! It was eerie. I glanced at Linda huddled in her sleeping bag and motioned her to remain silent. We hardly dared to breathe or hope that it might be over.


A sharp snuffing sound next to my ear outside the tent wall let me know that it wasn’t. It happened twice. It was obvious the bear knew we were there and was deciding his next move. What little food we had was perishable and packed in ice in the tent with us. It was inside one of those sturdy white plastic ice chests with the snap-on red lid. In all the confusion, I couldn’t remember if I had snugged the lid down or not. What if he could smell it...? Where was the second animal, had it been injured or scared off? We sat in heart-pounding silence, waiting...waiting.


We heard a few more muffled noises, but they seemed further away. For the first time, our hands connected between the cots for mutual white-knuckled assurance, but we didn’t make a sound for quite awhile.


Finally, I unzipped the tent door and peeked out. Nothing.


The bear knocked over our camp table with the folding metal legs and the Coleman stove on it in his search for food but nothing else was disturbed.


We stretched and sighed in relief for a minute and then, needless to say, tore down our abundance of camping gear, stuffed it into our mid-sized Toyota Camry any old way we could and put the pedal to the metal!


Pale starlight accompanied two exhausted people as they wound their way down the steep mountain road towards civilization away from their unwelcome visitors. They suspected that some Bible study and meditation was going to be necessary for them to understand the demonstration of God’s mercy they had just experienced. One thing was certain. It had very little to do with human effort.


The humorous thing about it all was that they gave all of their expensive camping gear away as soon as they got home. They were just getting to old to “rough” it any more, at least that’s what they told themselves.


The End.