bearish

I was pootling through Washington's Leadbetter State Park in the evening, and a bear loped across the road right in front of me. I couldn't have been more surprised. The excitement at seeing it was tempered by the terror that Mama Bear was possibly not very far away; perhaps just on the other side of the trees and bushes lining the road, and so thick they were impossible to see through. It wasn't a cub, but I don't think it was an adult either. In fact, it looked sort of about the same size as the scooter, maybe a touch bigger. I stopped a few hundred yards down the road, just sitting on the scooter with the engine still running, and saw it wander back across the road and disappear into the woods. I had to return down the same road in order to leave the park, and was both hoping that I would see it again, and not. Oddly - perhaps ominously? - there was one shoe in the middle of the road not far from the sighting, but no sign of the foot it belonged to.