Geogirl. Kelly Rysten

A bear! Right there on the hillside with us!

      “Try six o’clock, nine o’clock, eight o’clock.”

      “Hurry, hurry,” he muttered to himself as I watched the bear.

      “Don’t hurry or you’ll mess up. Take your time and think.”

      “Nine…”

      He fiddled with the lock as the bear noticed it had company.

      “Oh shoot, oh shoot.”

      “Oh look! Little ones!” I exclaimed excitedly.

      The bear stood up and sniffed the air.

      “Gabby, go upstairs. The bear will stop at the grate.”

      “It’s not worried about us. It’s just here for a snack. There must be berries out there or something. You don’t have any snacks in the pack do you?”

      He fiddled faster and the bear wandered closer, sniffed the air again.

      I heard the snap of a lock unlocking and the rattle of the metal door opening.

      “Quick! Get the cache!” I bent down to retrieve the cache and he stood up to get out of my way. “Yah! Yah bear! Back! Back I say!”

      The bear was making conversational noises and walking toward us. I had heard somewhere that bears could run very fast for short distances.

      “Gabby! Get in! Get in now! Now! Ahhhh!” He shoved me gently toward the opening where the ice was added to the refrigerator. I glanced over my shoulder, saw the bear galloping our direction. I crawled in, realized Twiggy was crawling in, too, and stood up. We stood nose to nose. There was just enough space for two thin people to stand, but our feet were still exposed to the bear’s reach. The metal door banged as the bear tried to see inside.

      “Can you climb the shaft?” Twiggy asked.

      “How?”

      “Push out with your hands and your feet. It’s called a chimney climb.”

      “Not with the cache,” I said.

      The cache was beside me. I didn’t want to let it go and have the bear get it.

      “I wanted to get closer to you, but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he said. “Try climbing. I can do it but I don’t want to leave you here.”

      “How?”

      “Push out. Like this. Then while your hands are bearing your weight bring your feet up. Push out. Raise your hands. Push out. Just keep pushing outward and upward until you get to the shelf in the refrigerator. Push it up with your head and push the door open.”

      “You’re kidding, right?”

      “No!”

      “O… kay. What if I fall on you?”

      “You won’t. I know you can do it. If Santa Claus can do it you can, too. Push out. Now pick up your feet. Are you slipping?”

      “No, wow, I never did this before.”

      “So while you are stable bring your feet up. Push out. Got it?”

      “Uh, I think so.”

      I tried to copy Twiggy’s actions and it worked slowly. I heard the bang of the metal door at the bottom and tried to climb faster.

      “I took archery for PE!” I muttered as I climbed. “Why didn’t I take refrigerator climbing?”

      “Let go with your hands and find a higher spot.”

      I couldn’t believe it! I was climbing a refrigerator!

      “This is so weird,” I said. “This is going to make a great log on the cache page.”

      “Just keep climbing. When you get to the tower I’ll follow.”

      “Okay, too bad we can’t get pictures of this.” My voice started echoing in the enclosed space but there wasn’t enough space for a proper echo so it just sounded hollow.

      The shaft seemed longer than the stairs but I thought that was because I was taking smaller steps and doing something new. If I was used to climbing refrigerators it would go a lot quicker.

      “Ooo, ouch!” I said as I bumped my head on the underside of the bottom shelf. “I think I made it!”

      I had to push out with my feet and wrestle the shelf. It didn’t move easily. I tried banging on it and it popped loose.

      “Fore!” I yelled as it slid down the shaft. “Shelf attack!” Whack!

      “Ouch!”

      “Sorry, I tried to warn you. Are you okay?”

      “Yeah, I think so. It just surprised me.”

      I bumped my head on the next shelf too, but I thought I had enough space to crawl out of the refrigerator. I was glad the door was not like a modern refrigerator. The door was more like a cupboard door and swung open easily. It took some squirming to get through the opening but finally I stood up once more inside the lookout tower.

      “Okay! I made it!” I yelled down the shaft.

      “All right, coming up,” called Twiggy.

      Bang, bang, bang went the door as the bear tried to reach Twiggy’s feet. It didn’t sound like an angry attack, but it was too close for comfort. I ran out onto the catwalk and looked down. The bear noticed movement above and paced below. In the distance I could see two bear cubs alternately eating and batting at each other. I didn’t know if they were playing or irritating each other. Probably both.

      It didn’t take Twiggy long to climb the shaft but he had a harder time climbing out the door. When he stood up he found me grinning ear to ear pointing out to the catwalk. One cub dashed away from the other then turned around and invited a new attack.

      “There’s bears!” I said excitedly. “Can we take a picture? It’ll be great to post it on the log!”

      “Hold on,” he said. “Let me get the pack and the cache.”

      He untied a rope attached to his belt loop, then went back to the refrigerator and pulled his pack up the shaft.

      “It does have a little food in it,” he explained.

      When he had the pack in hand he unzipped it and pulled the cache out.

      Clang! Cloong! The bear was trying to open the grate.

      Twiggy pulled the lock out of his pack and carefully used it to lock the grate closed.

      “At what point do we ask for help?” I asked.

      “I don’t know. What about you? How long are you willing to be stuck up here?”

      “She’ll get bored and leave, then we can hike back to the van.”

      We sat on the floor of the watchtower and looked through the contents of the ammunition container. I still was not so entrenched in the hobby that I called it an ammo can. There were still a few of the big, plastic fake jewels, but the geocachers before us had traded for most of them and the rest of the contents were typical of all the other caches I had found: Three fake jewels, a Matchbox car, a little girls’ bracelet, a stubby screwdriver, a business card for an auto shop, two erasers, and a plastic lizard. I signed the log with an additional note, “We saw bears!”

      “I think we should trade for a jewel. It’s the one thing that will remind us of the cache.”

      “Okay, sounds good to me. I don’t usually take things anymore. Just looking for them is the fun part.”

      “Even if you get chased up refrigerators by protective mother bears?”

      “Yeah, though I wish you’d heed my warnings faster.”

      “I was more excited