Just a bit ago, a few years before Covid, i was fishing in a Wilderness A rea in the Southern Rockies. The Wilderness Area boundary on the East is a modest size fast water river cutting through a steep canyon. Where I parked was about twenty miles in on an once in a while but mostly not maintained rough dirt road on the West or opposite side of the canyon.
After attempting to threatening the trout to no avail i marched back to the boundary and across to an undeveloped parking/camping area at the top of the opposite side of the canyon. My truck, an old stock F150XL, was the only vehicle and I was the only human around as far as I know. At least I hadn't seen anyone in days.
Took off the wet clothes and set them in the sun and settled down on the tailgate to read a couple days old paper I picked up on the way in to scan the news and classifieds. I learned long ago the classifieds can tell a lot about the community local papers cover. That's also usually close to the comics in smaller circulation papers
The sun felt good and sitting in the middle of the tailgate with legs dangling was pretty nice. I was reading about some local drama of little consequence when a islight movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. I waited and a big old bear head poked around the corner of the truck bed and stared right at me. That bear was full head high with the tailgate and I could have reached out and touched his nose. I recognized it was a black bear albeit a big one. Looked just like a teddy bear except really big and really close.
He stood and looked and I looked back. I'm not sure who was more amused, me on seeing that curious bear or the bear on seeing an old guy without boots, socks or pants reading a newspaper. He gave a sniff or two so did I. I never felt threatened and clearly that bear didn't so we just waited checking each other out. He seemed pretty interested in the paper I was holding though.
After a few minutes or so I rustled the paper very slightly and pretended to look st it keeping my peripheral peeled.
The bear just turned away when I did and slowly moved to the canyon edge and headed downslope to a big old fallen tree. There he began nosing around for whatever he was hoping to find at the time. I put on my almost dry by rhen boots and watched from the canyon edge as he nosed around for a while than continued downhill and across the river back into the wilderness area. He was soon lost from sight in the forest.
I think that bear might have wanted to get a closer look at that paper. But I hold on to a paper until I read the funnies. Always have.
