Commentary: Unexpected forest predator prompts this inveterate hiker to reconsider his trail attire

As readers of my commentary pieces must be very tired of hearing, I often start my daily hike in the dark at this time of the year and never think about those wild animals we’re always warned about. The other day, however, I did see a predator and it was the most deadly of all.

I knew they existed, of course. Just the other day the Sivertsens, Dave and Gwyn, who know these mountains thoroughly — they are the creators of the tepee on the Mt. Lukens trail, the best-loved landmark of hikers and bikers around here — told me of the surprising amount of bear scat they found on one of the trails in the Angeles National Forest recently.

I will admit that my heart always skips a beat when in the half-light I see a crooked stick lying on the ground that could just as easily be a baby rattlesnake. I’ve also read the official instructions on what to do if attacked by a bear, one of which is “Make yourself look taller,” something I’ve been trying to do, unsuccessfully, all my life. Luckily I have never had to try it while being chased by a bear.

Once, far into the mountains, a young condor in a tree was perfectly content to sit for 10 minutes while my wife and I checked him out thoroughly. But overall I see animals so infrequently that I liken the chances of being attacked as similar to those of being struck by lightning or finding something interesting to watch on daytime television.

That day, however, I was going up one of the forest roads when I saw what looked like a light go on, then quickly off, about a couple of hundred feet above me. Almost always that would be a bicycle rider but it had stayed in one place.

A hiker was unlikely too: we have enough light from the sky to see well enough and find the switching on and off of a flashlight more distracting than helpful. Perhaps a headlight’s beams from the road below had momentarily illuminated something unusual.

I moved along quietly, hoping to solve an intriguing mystery. I turned a bend and there it stood in the deep twilight, partly concealed by bushes: a deer hunter armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows that sent a shiver through me. I was sure he’d be surprised to see me but I was the one who was surprised.

“I’ve been listening to your footsteps for the last 10 minutes,” he said. Ten minutes. That’s a quarter of a mile. No wonder I so rarely come across any wildlife. My feet, that I think of as light as Fred Astaire’s, are telegraphing my presence for miles around to creatures who have no desire at all for contact.

I was reminded of one of the most riveting story-tellings of my life, long ago when I sat in a gradually darkening room in Calcutta as evening came on, listening to a man talk of how he used to hunt Bengal tigers, masters of camouflage, weighing more than 300 pounds and known to suddenly burst out of the jungle at 30 mph or faster.

One day, he said, after living on taut nerves for hours and having seen all the signs that his prey had made but never catching a glimpse of it, a thought came to him. “As I was stalking him, he was stalking me,” he said. I can still hear the awe in his voice coming through that pitch-black room. He never went again.

Nowadays, of course, even the thought of shooting one of that magnificent and rapidly-diminishing breed is likely to land you in jail. But then, when a prowling tiger could carry off an unattended baby or put a whole village on lock-down, it seemed more natural.

My own encounter with the hunter, however, reminded me that I should dress more conspicuously. That day, like Robin Hood’s “suit of Lincoln green,” I was wearing a green sweater, the color of concealment.

Remembering from my schooldays in England how in the War of Independence elusive American sharpshooters easily picked off the British troops who stuck to the traditions of war in Europe, dressing brightly and massing together to frighten an enemy, I’ve decided that for trips in the woods in future I will become a redcoat wearing a hussar’s busby. Even the most ornery rattler should slither away at a sight like that.

Reg Green is a La Cañada Flintridge resident. He can be reached via www.nicholasgreen.org.