Bear Attack & Bimini Islands

“Youth is wasted on the young” – George Bernard Shaw

George may be right, but his statement didn’t apply to me. My younger days were balls to the wall – no other way to put it. Running at a million miles an hour with total disregard for consequences and the future. The enormous amount of risk I unknowingly took makes me grateful to be alive. I’ve ice-climbed frozen waterfalls in Vail, jumped out of airplanes, played polo (surprisingly dangerous), and gone spelunking in underground caves that were out of my league. As kids, our Mother would drive the neighborhood boys through the Cascade Mountains looking for bridges to jump off of into rivers. And I don’t mean twenty-footers, but real bridges spanning deep rivers. While other Mothers were building safety cocoons around their sons, mine was encouraging my brother and me to leap off of railroad trusses.

My youth was spent checking off adventures on a bucket list that got more and more dangerous. The second scariest adventure happened when I hoodwinked a friend into climbing the Middle Teton (12,809’) during a college summer in Jackson Hole. First off, we had no business even trying. The mountain still had snow on the southwest couloir, neither one of us had any mountaineering experience, and we had spent the night before drinking Moose Juice on the banks of the Snake River. I was a rock climber with a couple of technical climbs under my belt, but my buddy was a cigarette-smoking golfer whose favorite hobby was sleeping in. I came to Wyoming to rack up adventures; he came to get away from the heat of an Atlanta summer.

By the grace of God, we didn’t get an opportunity to kill ourselves, but we came close that day on account of a chance meeting with a bear. Chris and I were hiking switchbacks and got into a dangerous rhythm of not making our presence known. In the backcountry, you’re supposed to make loud noises every so often to scare away animals, but sometimes you get in the zone and forget. We paid the price when a 400-pound black bear charged us. Ole Smokey came out of nowhere with a terrifying amount of force. I can assure you that all the bullshit about using bear spray is exactly that – bullshit. Bears can run 30 mph, they’re naturally camouflaged in the wild, and they know they’re at the top of the food chain. Our bear came to a screeching halt four feet from me. I could see snot shooting out of his nostrils as he loudly caught his breath. As odd as it may sound, his nose scared me to death.

We both froze. And I mean froze like marble statues. Chris eventually whispered, “That’s a bear.” After his insightful observation, I attempted to walk, but my legs were jelly. They were shaking so much that I almost passed out. I took one step after another, waiting to have the back of my skull ripped open with a single swath of his paw. I worked with a guy the previous summer who was attacked by a bear in Yellowstone. His body was slit open from the armpit to the waist, and he had the scars to prove it. I managed to put enough steps together to catch up with Chris while the bear stood his ground. Once we could breathe, we both took a piss because it was about to happen involuntarily. After we relived ourselves, we looked back and didn’t see him. Feeling like prey to a predator lends itself to psychosis. Minutes later we saw him thirty feet up in a tree, surveying his mountain.

We had to decide to either stay put, head back down, which meant passing underneath him, or keep hiking up and hope he didn’t charge a second time. I’ve never felt so helpless in all my life. We chose to head up, and that was the last we saw of Smokey. We warned every hiker we passed, but everyone thought we were joking. I suppose if we were drenched in our own urine they might have believed us.

When we got back to the lodge, all the guys called bullshit. They thought we made it up to get the attention of the girls (which happened). Anyway, it was the second scariest thing in my youth. The first was embarking on a two-week sailing trip to the Bimini Islands. Similar to having no mountaineering experience and trying to summit a mountain, I crossed the Gulf Stream having never sailed – with a bunch of guys who had never sailed either. Four bozos from the University of Georgia and two engineers from Georgia Tech.

We arrived in Miami with a day to kill before we picked up our 60’ sailboat. We knew good and damn well they wouldn’t just hand over a yacht to a bunch of college kids. There was a mandatory sailing test, the details of which we knew nothing about. What we did know is if one of us miraculously passed it, the boat was ours. And if caught bullshitting, it was a no-go and we had two weeks to kill in sunny Miami. A win-win situation for a bunch of knuckleheads. We drew straws, and I lost. I was to meet the owner in the morning and win him over with my killer personality, charm his pants off, and convince him I was a good guy to rent a multimillion-dollar boat to because I sure as hell wasn’t passing any test.

Remember, I had never sailed in my life. I met him at the dock to discover the test was sixty ‘Yes/No’ questions on a piece of paper. I circled Yes sixty times, and off we went – hand to God the truth. We didn’t even know how to get the damn thing out of the harbor, but cigars were lit, “Barometer Soup” by Jimmy Buffett was playing, and come hell or high water, we’d be chasing Hemingway’s ghost in the Biminis. We had several gallons of rum, sundries for two weeks (or so we thought), and two pistols with ammunition.

Spirits couldn’t have been any higher as we set sail for the Bahamas. Turquoise water, salty air, and a sense of freedom that only comes when you’re deep in nature. Every one of us knew how dangerous this was, but no one would be the first to say it. We sailed for hours until we were in the pitch black of the Atlantic. I remember how excited I was to get far enough out to sea that the Miami skyline was no longer visible. And then everyone’s worst nightmare happened.

In a matter of minutes, we were engulfed in fifteen-foot swells. The wind was so violent that it snapped the sail as we prayed for Poseidon’s mercy. And being a bunch of young bucks with more balls than brains, no one wanted to be the first to put a life vest on, but we all did eventually. Dad told me before I left that if the shit hits the fan, to take off a shoe, put my driver’s license in it, and tie it back tightly so my body could be identified if it was found. Ten minutes in, my license was in the bottom of my Sperry. I was convinced I was going to die. And worse, I was going to drown. My college roommate lost his mind.

Charles went to the bow of the boat with his legs dangling off and his arms wrapped around the railing as the boat took him up in the air and then underwater, back and forth like an insane hood ornament.

The storm passed, and we woke up the following morning in the Bimini Islands, our nerves fried to the core from an exhausting cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol. In 20/20 hindsight, we got to see how we dealt with facing death – at sea, no less. Whereas my roommate temporarily lost his mind, I was unusually calm in a fruitless effort to control the uncontrollable. To this day, it’s a weird thing to think about.

Candidly, I’m envious of my roommate’s reaction – ballsy, to say the least.

Over the next two weeks, we swam with dolphins, went scuba diving, drank in Hemingway’s bars, and read a lot. This was the late 90s when paperbacks were the only source of entertainment. I read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time cover to cover and loved it. Thankfully, we had intellectual firepower on board. Evenings were spent watching shooting stars and discussing science, philosophy, and history. If it wasn’t for the Georgia Tech guys, we would’ve been forever lost at sea. They figured out the GPS system and were able to fix the never-ending amount of things that broke, including the sail but also the electrical system, helm, plumbing, anchor, and propeller. We island hopped, checked out sunken ships, and played cards for hours on end. There isn’t a lot to do when you’re sailing for sixteen-hour stretches.

When the propeller broke, which is vital on account of unreliable summer winds, Charles and I took the dingy to shore to find a phone on what looked to be a deserted island. We were anchored in shark-infested waters, so while we were gone, the rest of the guys couldn’t even go for a swim. The plan was to be back in a few hours. At that point, our provisions were down to a pineapple and a gallon of gin, and cabin fever was quickly settling in. We walked aimlessly on sandy roads without a map or any means of communication. After several hours of baking in the sun and admitting we were lost, a red Jeep came tumbling down the road. To our surprise, it was a friendly Greek couple who asked if we wanted to go to the beach to drink Kalik’s. We didn’t think twice, hoped in the back, tried to get past the language barrier, and proceeded to not only hydrate ourselves with Bohemian suds but completely forget about the rest of the guys stranded on the boat with a single pineapple. We were later told they argued over who would get to kill us.

As the sun was setting and after a ton of Kalik’s, the Greeks asked if we wanted to go to a disco. We had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like fun, especially when you’ve been cooped up in a boat that smells like a locker room. So we left the beach and drove up a winding hill to the top of the island, where we heard music blasting from a dilapidated shack. For the record, nothing felt right about it from the very start. Charles and I still didn’t know what island we were on; we could barely string a coherent sentence together, and we had “Kidnap Me” stamped on our foreheads. The bouncers at the door wore camouflage shorts, flip-flops, and had M-16s. People were dancing, but you could only see shrouds of them through blinking lights and cigarette smoke. I ordered a Kalik, got a glass of scotch, and noticed the gentlemen at the door weren’t the only ones carrying machine guns. I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me at the bar who had a beat-up .45 lying next to his drink. When I realized he wasn’t a conversationalist, I suggested we shag ass. To our surprise, no one acknowledged our departure any more than our arrival. We got in the Jeep and took off to the cottage where the Greeks were staying. Charles and I woke up the following morning outside on lawn chairs. I lit a cigarette, left a thank-you note, and thumbed a ride to a harbor with a phone. Two days later a propeller was flown in, and the Ramblin’ Wreck guys replaced it underwater as we kept an eye out for sharks. As much as this Georgia Bulldog razzes Tech, I will always appreciate how important engineers are. If there were only Georgia boys on board, we’d probably still be on that damn boat waxing poetic about the last pineapple.

Several days later, on our way back to Miami, we docked on a private island for the night. Most docks charged ten dollars to hook up, but this place was seventy-five, and we were told in no uncertain terms to stay on the dock. The first thing Charles and I did was sneak over to a beachside bar for margaritas while everyone else took a nap. We proceeded to get good and plastered with Greg Norman. His massive yacht was anchored out to sea with his trademark shark painted on the hull. We had a grand time with the PGA pro and quickly figured out where we were. We haphazardly landed at the infamous Cat Cay Yacht Club, an island getaway for the Royal Family, celebrities, and yachtsmen. Even President Nixon was a regular (he was vacationing at the club during the Watergate burglary). The golf course was named after the Duke of Windsor, who regularly played there and had a casino built for himself. Paying no mind to the rules, we streaked naked across the island later that evening. We passed mansion after mansion with servants dressed in tuxedos, shorts, and socks up to their knee caps. We snuck back to the same beachside bar the following morning for breakfast margaritas and were told Tom Cruise was not only on the island, but his party got a kick out of seeing us run by in our birthday suits.

We eventually made it back to Miami with the boat in one piece. We spent the last twelve-hour stretch dreaming about a warm meal and a hot shower. For two weeks, the ocean was our only means of bathing, and food was always in short supply. Our beards were embedded with sand and salt water, our hair matted to our skulls, and our clothes needed to be burned. When Charles’ mother picked us up, she drove us back to her house, made us strip down before we went inside, and turned on every shower she had. Later that evening she took us out for dinner, where we ate our weight in Brazilian steak.

It was one of those experiences that could never happen again. A bunch of friends sailing for weeks through the Bahamas without a care in the world – almost sounds too good to be true. Or, better yet, an entire summer working beneath the Grand Tetons in Jackson Hole. Again, too good to be true. When I started doing college internships in lieu of adventures, I didn’t understand the trade-off I was making. Looking back, maybe I should’ve packed more in. But, truth be told, I had fun putting on a suit and tie and working at the Salomon Smith Barney office. I suppose it was a different kind of adventure.

A friend of mine once said, “Evans, you’re the only guy I know who’s just as comfortable wearing a tuxedo at a country club as you are living in a tent in the backcountry.”

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