I think DG guides like you, Phil, have experience based upon multiple encounters which leaves most of us shaking our heads. I know it does me. I want to ask what may be a couple of esoteric questions: first, when a large, apex predator comes a'calllin' at a high rate of speed do you recall if your vision tunnels and time has that slowing down experience? Second, I have never been charged by anything except a buck raccoon who got his just desserts while you have reported being charged on multiple occasions by bears. In the aftermath, I wonder if there is a momentary, crystalline recognition of the fragility of one's own life and how sweet and pure life is? In other words, most of us can figure out intellectually that being alive beats the alternative but I suspect a peak experience (albeit one you did not go looking for) like a determined bear charge must make it very clear in those moments afterward?


The way life should be.