Bear Piss Breathers
Part Three: Stories From Quetico Provincial Park
The dishes drip-dried in the rack. Dad sipped wine at the shoreline, sitting on a big round rock relaxing. Our group survived a huge lake crossing earlier in the day, and we landed at this camp exhausted, tired, and ready for a break. Jerry scurried around tidying up while Mark and Cary sat by the stone fire ring pouring over maps, lining out the next day’s leg of the journey. I walked with my friend Sherri down the beaten path where Dad, better known as Chuck, rested his eyes on an explosion of evening lavender and pink colors reflecting off the smooth surface of the lake. Three canoes bobbed gently on the end of their ropes, tied to a scrubby-looking Jack Pine on the bank.
Sherri and I just happened to be carrying our mugs, knowing Chuck was the Keeper of The Wine. He smiled as we approached, “Are those cups empty?”
Sherri beamed back, “Yep, they sure are!”
Chuck grabbed the plastic bag full of red elixir lying at his feet and pushed the spout open, filling our cups with the coveted liquid he carefully carried through the Canadian Wilderness. During a small mishap a few days prior, the box that held the wine bag met an untimely demise in the river. He lost the box but saved the bag. We marveled at how the man could pack a thin plastic bag full of liquid all over the backcountry without so much as losing a drop. Until, of course, it was time to pour.
The murmur of route planning wafted down from camp as the three of us sat watching the light show. The sun is a show-off in this country. Mirrored lakes reflect sky colors so beautiful they have no names. If you name something, you know something. A certain quality of light dances on the spectrum in this wilderness, defying ownership by name. It doesn’t want to be called or described; it just wants to shine and remind anyone willing to notice that magic is indeed alive and well on Planet Earth. I imagine even bears and beavers in this territory stop to watch sunsets on these lakes.
Chuck pried himself from the reverie and set his tin mug down, “Back in a minute. Need to deposit some wine.”
He walked into the woods away from camp. A few minutes later, we heard him exclaim something but couldn’t make out the words. Jerry hollered at him from the kitchen zone where he was pulling on his jacket, “What, Chuck? What did you say?” Then more murmuring. A few minutes later, Chuck stood on the bank above us, “Hey you guys, come check this out.” We walked up the trail and followed his lead. On a side trail to the north of camp, Jerry stood there cackling in what looked like a giant cotton ball of bugs. When Jerry laughed, it echoed across whatever lake we were on. When Jerry cackled, the delightful sound probably carried for a mile or more. Mark came into view from the other direction, “What the hell are you guys doing over here?”
As I approached the scene, a thick musky smell permeated the air. It stood the hair up on my arms. “Whew, it stinks over here.”
Chuck responded, “Smells like bear piss or something.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. He shot back, “No, it wasn’t me. I was going to pee back here but realized some critter beat me to it fairly recently. I started checking out the area for scat or sign of a possible visitor when all these weird bugs lifted off the ground.”
Jerry started a new round of cacophony with hundreds upon hundreds of large bugs flying around his head willy-nilly. They weren’t attacking or stinging him, unlike bastardly mosquitoes. They were just flitting around with long, gangly legs and translucent wings. These bugs were hilarious to watch. Jerry had tears running down his face, “Yeah! These are Bear Piss Breathers. Get it? Bear. Piss. Breathers.” He laughed until he doubled over and nearly wet his pants.
That kind of laughter is contagious, and we all cracked up at Jerry cracking up, which fueled him to laugh harder and fling more bear piss jokes. Within seconds we sounded like a bunch of marooned sailors drinking all the ship’s rum. Now, I realize some things may not translate here. As the saying goes, “You had to be there” may ring true. But I will say this was more than a fleeting moment. Bear Piss Breathers became the mascot of the trip and many trips after. They were the joy bringers. Those of us who were there at the time of discovery still get an involuntary smirk on our faces and start giggling whenever someone says their name.
This is what it means to name something. We know those bugs in a way only we can recognize. And now you’re in on it too. I never did look up their official name and purpose. Because then I would know them by that name, and it would take all the fun out of it.
Chuck heard something and whipped his head toward the west, where shadows lay across the lake’s surface. We saw him notice something and piped our voices down so we could all listen. He was serious. Sherri whispered, “What? What do you hear?”
“Don’t you all hear that?” He was stone still. We silenced ourselves except for Jerry, who was uncontrollably trying to control his laughing fit under his breath. I strained to hear something, but only the soft sound of the lake water lapping the shore was audible.
Chuck looked at us with eyes wide, “It sounds like a bush plane coming in from over there. Don’t you hear it? It’s heading this way.”
I concentrated until the sound he described came into focus. It did indeed sound like a faraway engine buzzing, getting louder and closer. Mark’s voice was low, almost a whisper, “Oh my god!” I looked in the direction he was facing and could see a black cloud coming across the lake.
“Mosquitoes!!!!! Run!!!!” We dispersed like a skunk just dropped a stink bomb, running us in every direction towards camp. Jerry tripped over a tree root, and I slopped wine out of my cup as I ran by. Mark and I dove into the tent with our boots on, zipping it up as fast as we could when the onslaught hit. For what seemed like forever, we used headlamps to bait the sonsofabitches into the light so we could slap them between our palms. Too many to count made it past the zipper and were on full assault mode. The camp hummed with a loud buzzing symphony as the bug cloud descended on us. The applause from humans clapping mosquitoes in midair or on skin in 5 different tents was quite stellar. We remained prisoners in our tents for several hours, waiting until the temperature dropped far enough to send the bug army into retreat.
Photo by Mark Vail
Jerry hollered over to Cary’s tent, “Hey man, you okay? Damn, that was intense!”
This was Cary’s first backcountry wilderness trip, “You all are f’ing crazy. I could’ve died out there from those vampire bastards sucking my blood. You call this fun?”
I heard Sherri laugh from her illuminated tent. She was calmly reading a book by headlamp light. Mark responded through the tent screen completely coated on the outside with a furry layer of mosquitoes, “Yeah man, it doesn’t get any better than this!” He then yelled over to Jerry’s tent, “Hey Jer… now we know why this campsite was barely used.” Jerry responded in his cheerful way, “I know, right? Joke’s on us.”
Chuck piped up, “Oh Shit, I left the bag of wine on the shore.” Everyone groaned from their tents, “Oh no, not the wine!”
Mark yelled out, “Hey Cary, go get the wine.”
“Oh hell no, kiss my ass. Y’all are crazy.” Cary did not sound amused. Chuck took the baton and ran with it, “Mark, your tent is closer. Why don’t you go get the wine.” Mark fake-coughed, “Uh, I just took my boots off. Jerry. Hey, Jerry, uh, we’re in a bind and need you to go get the wine.”
Jerry was futzing around with his headlamp, the light bouncing eratically off his tent walls, “Yeah, well, I don’t want to get caught between those little mother-buzzers and Bear Piss Breathers. It’s your wine, Chuck. You go get it.”
Crickets chirped. Baited silence hung over Chuck’s tent.
And for that one night, we found the cold edge of what an Italian man is not willing to do for his vino.
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© 2021 Michelle McAfee
