“It’s a grizzly. It must be a grizzly. Please don’t be a grizzly.” Thoughts fired in quick succession through James’s mind. Two hours earlier he started for a run just outside the boundary of Rocky Mountain National Park. James sat behind a desk most days answering email and phone calls, and he had to work a few extra hours that week. This was his chance to finally spend some time outside and get some exercise. He had moved to Colorado two years earlier, and loved living near the mountains. The trail he decided on cut through the woods, then carried him up and down several rocky hillsides. He was impressed by the landscape, but the trail was much longer than he had planned. He had already come across several picturesque viewpoints of mountain valleys to the west, and incredible peaks in the far distance to the east.  Imposing storm clouds had dominated throughout the day, so the crowds of hikers that he might have encountered along the path on a sunny day were absent on this particular, late-summer afternoon. He had only seen two other people on the trail so far.

James entered a portion of the trail that followed the course of a narrow creek through dense bushes – “Eight miles” his cell phone announced in an electronic voice. He was focused on the trail. As he entered a gradual curve of the trail a loud rustling shook the chest high bushes just to his right. Continue reading “Grizzly”