A story submission from MLF supporter David Thornton

A QUIET WALK INTO THE BIG BEAR WILDERNESS

When I was maybe 12 years old, I was walking a trail with my dad and older brother. My dad was deer hunting in the Big Bear Lake area of California (this was the early 1950s). He was a hunter who never shot anything but loved being in the wilderness. He was also prone to bringing home injured animals if he found them—much to my mom’s dismay.

We were walking along a trail that led down to a gully with a small stream at the bottom. Ahead of us, about 20 meters up the path, something was lying in the trail. It looked like a pile of brown cloth, just heaped in the middle of the dirt.

My dad, who was from Tennessee and a WWII veteran, knew a thing or two about hiking in the wilderness. He stopped us suddenly. Then he pointed toward the pile of cloth and quietly moved us forward a few steps, giving us a whisper sign—his finger pressed to his lips.

My brother and I had no idea what was happening.

My dad suddenly called out in a loud voice, “Kitty, kitty, kitty!”

The pile of “cloth” exploded upward—shooting straight into the air at least ten feet—and then tore off down the gully at incredible speed.

That was when my brother and I saw our first mountain lion. A scene of grace and beauty we would never forget.

A LESSON IN RESPECT FOR WILDLIFE, A MEMORY THAT STILL INSPIRES CONSERVATION

We asked my dad why he didn’t shoot the lion. He said, “I’ll get him next time,” the same phrase he used the next season when he took us deer hunting and chose not to shoot a beautiful buck with a huge rack.

But he did rescue a mallard with a bad wing that day—again, much to my mom’s dismay.

That moment in Big Bear remained the only mountain lion I have ever seen in the wild.