Earlier this month my husband and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe we have been married for that long because I am only 29 years old. Or is it 39. Or maybe… maybe age is just a number so who really cares right???

I read this recently…
Life is fun and needs to be shared with our best friend, playmate and lover. This then is the rule of life for wives; Live with thanksgiving, forgiveness and joy and enjoy all your moments as if they were your last. Someday, soon enough, they will be.

I really like that as a reminder not to get bogged down the day to day struggles and frustrations.

Anniversary day.
I like to say I am an easy date. Take me hiking in the wilderness and I am a happy camper. Really.

So we went to this trail, it is near Glacier park. The boundaries of the park are on one side of the highway and we were on the other, so we were just outside of the park. This area does not get very many hikers. This is one way of saying we were the only ones there.

After you hike in about a mile you begin to see these.

You can see a little reflector on the tree, to mark the tree, and then a few strands of wire wrapping around on the left side of the tree, kind of like barbed wire.

Then if you look closer at the wire you will see this.

That is grizzly bear hair.
Now tell me, if you were hiking near Glacier Park, no other hikers around, in a remote part of the forest, and you saw this, would you begin to squirm a little in your hiking boots? I sure did. It is a bit of a creepy feeling knowing that a big bear had been scratching himself on this tree that I am now standing next to.

The reason for the wire is, it is posted in certain sections of forest where the grizzly bear is known to roam, the bears scratch against the wires and it collects a bit of their hair. Different people are assigned to go collect the hair and then they do DNA testing on the bear hair to help them determine the population and other things of interest about the bears.

Standing there looking at the tree I began to wonder how they knew where to put the wire, on which trees? It turns out that the bears are already going around and scratching the trees with their backs and their claws to mark their territory. So the park rangers look for the trees that the bears have already marked.

Like this one. The wire is on the other side.

Do you see those claw marks? Yes a big bear did that with his claws. Now if that doesn’t give you the creepies I don’t know what will.

Here Don has put his hand next to the scratch marks to reference the size.

We continued on our hike for about 10 miles round trip and we saw about a dozen of these trees with hair and various scratches.

Fortunately, for us we made it back down and at the end of the hike we had this view. This would be looking towards Glacier.

I hope you have enjoyed this little venture into bear world.

Safety Notice – The bears are not generally interested in people and we take all of the recommended bear safety precautions while hiking.