Along the Way

It's Hard to Shake That Spied-on Feeling When You're Alone and Out in the Wild

The anguished scream jolt-Led me out of an uneasy slumber. I sat bolt upright in my sleeping bag, grasping for my scattered wits. For the life of me, I couldn't orient myself. A moment before, I'd been dreaming I was running down a steep hillside chased by something deadly.

But what had awakened me? I shivered, unaccountably, in the mild spring night. Something had screamed wildly, close by. On any other night, in any other place, I would have struggled out of my sleeping bag and searched the area to determine whether a camper had fallen off some cliff. But not tonight. Not here.

After all, I'd ventured into Rattlesnake Canyon specifically for the mountain lion that prowled here. Earlier I'd written a story about research conducted on the big cats that stalk deer, javelinas, and cattle through this rugged terrain around Aravaipa Canyon. So I knew a scarred, worldly-wise 10-year-old female claimed Rattlesnake Canyon as home territory. She had raised two sets of cubs in the course of the study, apparently avoided kill-ing cattle, and survived. In this study area, hunters and trap-pers hired by ranchers killed about 10 percent of the lions each year, so this female had defied the odds to live so long on the flanks of our barbed-wire civilization. I'd returned to Rattlesnake Canyon partly because the cottonwoods in the bottom looked so alluring from the rim, and partly out of some ill-formed notion that I wanted to enter the lion's world alone, at night.

Sitting shoeless, shirtless, and weaponless in my sleeping bag, this seemed like a much less romantic notion than it ap-peared on the canyon rim.

Hastily I tried to reassure myself by going back over the statistics. Although some 2,500 lions roam the state undaunted by our century-long effort to exterminate them, they rarely attack humans. The biologists I'd talked to couldn't remember a single incident in which a mountain lion killed anyone in Arizona, although they colorfully recounted a few maulings. Including the one in which a mountain lion clawed a child who stood in its way as the lion charged up the trail away from the child's father, who'd just pulled the lion's tail. On the other hand, I had read about three fairly recent cases in which lions killed people in neighboring states.Not very reassuring, after all. Cautiously I slipped out of my sleeping bag and stoked the glowing remnants of my camp-fire. The fire destroyed my night vision but seemed to weave a protective spell around the clearing. Peering into the dark-ness, I tried to distinguish some sign of a watcher. But I saw nothing. So I finally crawled back into my sleeping bag and watched the embers fade until sleep again overcame me.My fears seemed silly the next morning, once I'd ab-sorbed the courage of the dawn that somehow seemed to put me and the lion on a more equal footing. I walked 15 yards to the trickle of a stream that nourished the cot-tonwoods to splash some wa-ter on my face. That's where I found the tracks.The enormous lion track had been pressed so deeply into the sand that water had collected in it. I looked about wildly, half expecting to find myself staring into yellow predatory eyes. I had recently spent some time at the Arizona-Sonora Des-ert Museum near Tucson, just watching a mountain lion. For one chilling moment, it met my eyes with a certain weary disdain. Something inextin-guishably wild and hungry lin-gered in those yellow orbs.

Starting from the single track, I walked an outward spreading spiral, looking for further mountain lion sign. Near a cluster of rocks, two long lion bounds from my crumpled sleeping bag, I found several indistinct tracks and fresh scat. She must have spent some time at this spot, watching me sleep. Did I smell like food? Did she resent my intrusion? Or had I merely aroused her sleepless feline curiosity?

I hurried back to my campsite and gulped my breakfast. Then I shouldered my pack and hiked back down the canyon. The hike proved uneventful. Once I surprised a doe coming around a boulder. In the trees, I noted flycatchers, thrashers, a lost bluebird, a Gila woodpecker, and a half dozen other flutters of feathers. But despite those signs of life, the canyon seemed hushed, expectant. I couldn't shake the nervous feeling of being watched.

I had nearly reached the end of the canyon when some impulse forced me to stop.

Turning, I headed back up the canyon. I walked for perhaps a quarter mile, carefully studying my back trail. I had just decided I was being paranoid when I found what I sought. Just to the side of my tracks lay the half-buried scat.

Stooping, I noted some coarse hairs but found no distinguishable paw prints. Standing, I scanned the rocks for some sign of my fanged shadow. Overhead, two vultures circled lazily. That's when I noticed the complete absence of birdcalls. I stood there for 10 minutes, straining for a sign. Nothing. Only the gradual return of the birdcalls. The vultures drifted on up the canyon. Do you suppose they followed her, those acolytes of death with binocu-lar vision?