I'm sure if we knew how many stalk us we'd all be wiggin' out back to the car in a hurry...

I found a perfect mountain lion track in the middle of a trail once. After eyeballing every rock and tree for a good ten minutes and seeing nothing, I waved and shouted "Hi, lion, just passing through!" and headed up the trail. If he wanted me, he would have had me already. I'm sure this has been repeated a thousand times since...

I was camped in a river bottom with a couple of friends. I spent several hours before bed trying to get rid of the feeling we were being watched - I kept looking around, up the canyon walls, into the trees, and never saw anything. I still think we were being watched to this day. Was it a person? It was a fairly well traveled area, in Henry Coe State Park. Was it a lion? Probably more likely that than a person. When it got dark, I stuck my ipod in my ears and listened to a relaxation mp3 until I fell asleep, slept soundly, and woke to a frost. Nothing happened. Nothing much I could have done if something had - hit it with a stick? Okay, my poles were close to hand, but will I have time to grab them? Or a gun? or a bear spray? Not really.

Incidentally, one of my friends brought a can of bear spray because she was worried about wild pigs. It went off in her pack by accident when she sat it down on a lunch break, prompting "why are you hissing at us." If we had been in bear country, it would have smelled mighty appealing to the bears. It also begged the question of what she thought she was going to do if pigs actually ran at us - drop the pack, upend it and dig?

Not all my friends think the way I do, either. That's okay, as long as they don't spray me with it.