A few moments later, I glanced over my shoulder and couldn’t see the bear, but neither of us stopped running until our breath was gone. We eventually slowed. My daughter was bent over, catching her breath. I was huffing as I surveyed the area, looking for the bear or anything else dangerous.
“God, that was a big bear,” I said at last. “Was that a panda?”
“A panda? Daddy, we’re not in China! There’s no pandas here! It was a grizzly bear!”
“Oh.”
“Daddy, I want to go home right now!” she said, nearly in tears.
“I know, baby. I know. Me too. Let me just get my bearings.”
I took out the phone. It was down to 6%. The forest was so thick here; the GPS app was frozen.
“We need to find a clearing. I can’t get anything.”
“Which way do we go?” she asked.
“Um, let’s head back the way we came.”
“Toward the bear?” she cried.
“Toward the path.”
“The path with the bear?” she said loudly.
“Abby, hush. You’re loud and that bear might hear us.”
“But you told me on the drive here that your survival TV shows said we should be loud, because it scares animals away, and you shouldn’t run from them, because they chase you.”
“Then why did you run?” I said in exasperation.
“Because I was fucking terrified!”
“Let’s just go slow. He probably left.”
We started back, but in truth, I had no idea which way was back. I was so turned around, and I couldn’t see the sky, and the GPS didn’t tell me much. When the battery hit 3%, I turned the phone off and put it away.
“What are you doing?” Abby asked.
I turned to face her. “Baby, we’re in a serious situation now. We’re lost.”
“But what about the path?”
“I don’t know where the path is, and the GPS isn’t working. We need to find a clearing, or get higher, something to tell us where we are, maybe get a signal, save the phone to make a call for rescue.”
“Rescue?” She gulped.
“Yes.”
“Daddy, you’re scaring me.”
“I know, baby. I’m scared too. But I’m right here. We’ll make it through. Come on. We have to keep moving. And if we find that stream again, we need to drink some water. I don’t know about you, but in this heat, I’m getting very thirsty.”
“Me too.”
“I wish we still had our bottle of water.”
“Why? It was almost gone. Who cares about the deposit right now?”
“I meant so we could use it. Bottles are like gold on survival shows.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, maybe if you paid a little more attention to your survival shows, we wouldn’t be lost.”
“Smart ass.”
We started walking again and continued for what felt like hours. The sky was getting dark, but I could feel the terrain climbing beneath my feet. Soon, we were navigating a rocky hillside. My daughter was in front of me, slipping. I reached out to grab her, and my hands found her butt. I pushed her up and she yelped and glanced back.
“Did you just grab my butt?”
I laughed nervously. “Sorry, baby, just trying to keep you from slipping.”
“If you weren’t my daddy and this wasn’t the most awful day ever, I would think that was the smoothest grope ever.”
At the top of the hill, we carried on, but the sky was growing much darker, and we were both getting nervous. Abby soon reached out to take my hand, holding it as the sunset fell.
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