I have at least two reasons for wanting to keep my wife in view while we are hiking. I mentioned her poor sense of direction in an earlier post. The other reason is for safety.

She is a short little fireplug of a person. If a cougar was looking for prey she would be perfect.

We've also had a few encouinters with bees and bears. She tends to freeze up when action would be a better strategy. She froze after stepping on a wasp nest and they were, literally, stinging her to death. I ran over and pulled her down the mountain to safety and removed the remaining stinging critters. She got about 2 dozen bites.

I'm also pretty good at scaring black bears away and I carry the bear spray. She isn't and she doesn't.