How I Killed a Bear

I found Schneider’s accounts of Adirondack guides particularly interesting and amusing. The 19th century Adirondack guides seem to epitomize the ideal of manly ruggedness that was thought to be essential for survival in the wilderness. In his travel narrative Adventures in the Wilderness, W.H.H. “Adirondack” Murray recounts his adventures paddling the rapids of the Raquette river and shooting loons (in a thunderstorm!) for sport, which he presents as particularly manly escapades.

Schneider also suggests that much of the lore surrounding guides is fictional. For example, Orson “Old Mountain” Phelps tended to use a cryptic lingo in his profession but could actually speak and write conventional English outside of guiding. Schneider presents a particularly striking image of an early tourist and a guide, snuggled up next to each other in a leaky lean-to in a rainstorm, but also points out that this is not the image of the period that endures.

A footnote on page 171 of Schneider caught my interest. It referenced a short story called “How I Killed a Bear” by Charles Dudley Warner, who was a writer who spent time (and actually killed a bear!) in the Adirondacks. I found the text online and it is as amusing as Schneider promises. The title suggests a feat of heroic manliness but the narrative seems to mock this implication. The story is about a man who is told by housekeepers at his cottage to fetch some blackberries. He sets off with a tin pail but grabs a gun on his way out so as to maintain an appearance of toughness. Warner suggests a fictional tale in which a father kills a bear that had kidnapped and cared for his daughter to set up a contrast between the “ideal” way to kill a bear and the author’s clumsy confrontation with the animal. When Warner first notices the bear while “blackberrying”, he freezes. His first thought, rather than to shoot it, it to give it a pail of blackberries to distract it as he attempts to flee. When he realizes that the bear is close behind, he reluctantly shoots the animal. This encounter mocks the ideal of manly ruggedness, which the guides were thought to exemplify, and suggests that it is often merely an act.

Here’s a link to the full text if you’re interested: http://www.24hourcampfire.com/Warner.html