Tom, Part 3- True Bear Stories

A trip to Yellowstone wouldn’t be complete without Tom.

We met Tom last year. He shared salsa and stories with us while frost settled on the pine trees outside. Almost immediately, our friendship was cemented into reality. Now, we try to visit Tom whenever we journey to Yellowstone. Every time we do, he has new stories to share. Somebody recently asked me if my Tom stories were fictional. Honestly, I don’t have the creativity to fabricate Tom’s tales! These stories come straight from the horse’s mouth. And, like all good stories, that’s what makes them remarkable. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

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“I used up my nine lives a long time ago,” Tom declared.

We were sitting around the campfire trading stories with our gruff Montana friend. Despite his penchant for making surprising statements, this one caught me off guard. I had been staring up at the velvety night sky, but I dropped my gaze to peer through the darkness at Tom. Almost to himself, he added, “I figure I owe the bears at this point.”

A car’s headlights illuminated the solitary road running through Silver Gate, Montana. The vehicle rumbled as it slowly rolled by, the sound dissolving into red tail lights at the far edge of town. When Tom didn’t elaborate on his declaration, I turned to Tyler quizzically. Luckily, he sensed my confusion.

“Tom was talking about how he’d want to go out if he knew a day and a time he was going to die. Like what he would do.”

”Oh?” I twisted back around to face the older man. “What would you do, Tom?”

The light of the campfire twinkled in Tom’s eyes, but his face was entirely serious. “Run right after a grizzly bear. Right at him.”

My analytical brain couldn’t figure out if he was joking or sincere. “I… feel like that wouldn’t be particularly quick?”

“One swat and it would be all over,” Tom reassured me. He coughed, the byproduct of too many cigarettes used to warm his fingers on cold Montana nights. “I figure that’s the best way to do it.”

I laughed, mostly because the mental image of Tom sprinting through the woods was pretty funny. “Seems like a pretty good plan.”

”Yep, he’s gonna charge and I’m gonna charge and we’ll just see what happens. We’ll see who chickens out!” Tom was grinning now. “Because once you’ve made that decision, there’s no turning back.” The merriment in his eyes was tangible. “I hope the bear knows that too!” 

Throwing his head back, Tom shouted into the dark trees. “I’m comin’ to get ya, bear!”

Our peals of laughter followed Tom’s war cry. They echoed off to the hills and stars, undoubtedly reaching the ears of a bear nearby. There were bears everywhere in Montana and Wyoming. Tom, a veteran of both states, had plenty of war stories to share. 

“Do you wanna hear bear stories?” He had leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He looked at each of us in turn as we huddled around the fire. “True bear stories?” he added.

Naturally, we said yes. 

Tom settled back more comfortably into the wooden adirondack chair. He crossed his hands across his stomach and stared off into the fire. “It was my second day of work at Yellowstone. It was 1977. I used to run the Canyon Campground. So I was riding along with a guy named Dave who was from Nebraska. We went down south of Canyon, patrolling around, and we stopped at this area where these four French people were going to take a picture of a grizzly bear. From the road, there was one tier and then a second tier.” Tom stacked his hands to mimic a layered slope. 

“The bear was up on the second tier. The French people were getting way, way too close, so Dave told me to go out and get them and bring them back. So I did. Except when we almost got back to the car, the Frenchman said he’d dropped the lens cap for his camera. So I had to go back.” 

I tried to conjure the mental image of a younger Tom in a Yellowstone uniform, grumbling as he waded through the weeds to find a sloppy tourist’s lens cap. I grinned when the image came readily. I bet Tom had some colorful things to say about the Frenchman back in the day too.

Tom was still storytelling. “When I got to the bottom of the tier, all I heard was Dave on the megaphone yelling ‘Bear! Get down!’”

Tom’s voice turned grave. “So I did. Played dead. The bear ripped up my National Park Service jacket. Ripped it to shreds. It tried to roll me over, so I rolled with him. I managed to get on my stomach again. And then, the bear walked off.” 

We all murmured in disbelief. 

“And a bear’s breath, let me tell you, it is rancid. Bad, bad, bad. And that was the second day I was there!” he added cheerfully.

If that’s how my second day at a job went, I think I would quit. Tom must be made of tougher stuff than me, because his bear stories weren’t done.

“The next week, we were doing trail maintenance. We were starting at Grebe Lake and circling around to a few other lakes on the trail. We all had long-sleeved shirts but none of us took jackets. We weren’t going to be out there that long. And, of course, none of us had bear spray. There wasn’t any bear spray back then. So a guy I worked with, John Baskin, of Baskin-Robbins from the Minneapolis area,” Tom raised his eyebrows at us, knowing we’d recognize the name of the popular ice cream brand. “Anyways he said, ‘Well, take a whistle or harmonica with ya. If you go around a blind corner or hill, just breathe into it. Then bears will know you’re coming and they’ll get out of your way.’ Well, that was fine and dandy except I left those two things at home!

So I work my way around the trail. At Wolf Lake I saw a bear, but it was way off in the distance. At Ice Lake, I sat down to have lunch. I had a knapsack, axe, and pulaski with me. After lunch, I got back just about to Grebe Lake when I come around this blind corner. And there was a grizzly. With two cubs. I was in big trouble.”

Tom was deep in the story now, looking at each of us in turn to make sure his words were having the intended impact.

“She went up on two legs to see what was in front of her. She went back down. Then she started getting frantic and chopping her jaws. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my god, if she goes back up again, I’m gonna have to find a tree!’ You can’t play dead with a sow with cubs. She’ll rip you to pieces! Sure enough, she goes back up again. So I throw my knapsack one way, my pulaski another way, and I hit a pine tree right behind me. I climbed up as fast as I could. I went up about twenty-five feet. The bear came up about twenty.” 

Everyone around the fire gasped in horror. 

“Now, it’s a myth that grizzly bears can’t climb,” Tom informed us. “They can climb. Fast. But I don’t think she came up any further because she had small cubs. They’d just been born that year. So she went back down and I stayed up in the tree. Radio on, sitting there, sitting there, sitting there. The guys that were supposed to pick me up at 3:00 showed up at 5, late. They get on the radio and say ‘Tom, where are ya?’ Now this was on district-wide radio. Everyone in the district could hear ya. Thank God I wasn’t on park-wide radio! So they ask where I am and I say, ‘Well, I’m south of Grebe Lake but I’m up in a tree.”

They said, ‘What in the hell are you doing up in a tree for?’

I said, ‘Well, there’s a sow grizzly and I had to get away from it, so I climbed this tree.’

And they didn’t believe me. 

I thought to myself, why would you be joking on district radio about being up in a tree if you weren’t up in a tree??

And so they said, ‘Well we have to go patrol over at Norris. We’ll be back and we’ll give you a call then.’ And click! They were off the radio.

I thought, well what am I going to do? I sat there. I must have dozed off. The bear was at the bottom of the tree when I was up at the top. But when I came to, there was no bear. I didn’t know where she had went! I didn’t know if she was twenty feet away and lying down, or if she had left the area. I had no idea.

They finally call me again around 8:00. It’s getting dark at 8:00. It’s getting chilly at 8:00. And I don’t have a jacket!  When they called me again, I said where I was and they finally believed me. So they asked, ‘Well, can you get out of that tree?’ 

I said, ‘I don’t know where the bear is!’

They told me, ‘If you can get out of that tree, we’ll start walking in and we’ll meet you.’

When I got outta that tree, that was when I was most scared. I didn’t know where she was. So I’d walk about ten feet, then stop at listen. Walk another ten feet, then stop and listen.

I thought to myself, ‘This is going to take all night!’ So I did the only thing I could think of. I started singing. I sang the only song I could think of. I sang Amazing Grace. As loud as I could!  They met me at the lake and we walked out with no problems.

So the next morning, I’m sitting in the Canyon ranger station office. My office was here,” he drew an outline in the air, “and then there was an adjoining office for another ranger. Four college students came in and said ‘We want to make a complaint.” 

So I got out the typewriter and put in the paper and carbon paper. I typed their names in and when I got down to the description box I said, ‘So, what happened?’

The students said, ‘Well, we came down from Montana State in Bozeman for the weekend. We wanted just a nice, quiet camp with an easy walk. The night was alright but when we went to bed around midnight, some a-hole walked by our tent yelling Amazing Grace and woke us all up!’

The rangers in the next office were laughing so hard they had to close the door so they wouldn’t be heard.

And that was my second week at Yellowstone. I was there for twelve years. So yeah, I used up my nine lives about twenty-five years ago!”