05 15 20

We ran into snow about twelve miles up the Forest Service road; a mile after it went from a single paved lane to a single dirt lane. It was just a little patch with bare road after. Bare for a while anyway.

The second patch gave us a little trouble. We should have turned around after that but there was bare road ahead. Then snow then bare road. We got stuck just past milepost thirteen. Neither one of us had decided to keep going but neither one of us had decided to stop either.

I bent my little fire-shovel before i finished digging out the first wheel. Things slowed down after that. We spent an hour or so digging out the wheels until they were spinning freely; some in the icy caves they'd dug out trying to find traction, others weren't touching the ground at all. High centered and stuck it began to rain and it was high time for a nap.

Rain turned to hail into more rain. We left the car running for half an hour hoping to heat up the undercarriage and melt our way to freedom. Then we dozed. I woke up first and started shoveling, trying to be quiet. There was only the one shovel and no need for both of us to be up and working at the same time. The sun was about an hour away from falling behind the foothills behind us and i was getting resigned to spending the night on Forest Service road 114 or whatever. 

Sarah was up ten minutes later, groggy. Five or ten more minutes of shoveling and poking sticks under the car looking for a trick to get us out.

"There are bears," Sarah said, deadpan. It didn't even register at first until she said it again with a little note of panic.

And there were bears. Two. Young. Cavorting bears that looked a whole lot like they were running for the car.

Next i knew we were locked tightly in the stuck car. Surrounded by fragile looking glass on all sides but below. The bears stopped running but continued to *play*  and continued to get closer. We were alternating between awe and terror. 

They got closer. I turned the car on. They got a little closer. I started thinking the horn. They went around, walking past us in the edge of the woods before returning to the road at the next bare patch. 

We watched them go, wondered about the location and attitude of an assumed mama bear. Stuck it in reverse and we were suddenly unstuck and in no mood to collect the tarps,  floor-mats and assorted junk that we'd enlisted trying to get unstuck.