Mitsubishi ending U.S. production...

This is not good news. Back in the nineties, Chrysler dealers sold the Eagle Vista in Canada, and I had their 1992 model. I loved it passionately, and I'm serious about that. For an old bachelor like me, who liked exploring the back country, it was ideal. I could flatten down the seats and sleep in the back. There was just enough room for a nice cozy down-filled sleeping bag, and a little smokeless heater for those frosty nights. I almost met a large Grizzly that way one moonlit night in October. I was camped in an old clearcut back in the hills, and because I needed room in the back of the little minivan, I'd placed my box of groceries out on the roof. Because I had the smokeless heater going, I had the windows cracked open an inch or two for ventilation. That's what probably saved me from a personal encounter with a very large bear.

About 4:00 a.m., something woke me up, but by the time I got fully awake and rigged the spotlight that plugged into the cigarette lighter, whatever it was had gone. I shone the light around to the nearest tall bushes about fifty yards past the little creek I was parked beside, but didn't see any movement, so after admiring the first traces of dawn in the east, I went back to bed.

Next morning, washing up in the creek, I noticed near a big log that formed a natural bridge over the creek something in the mud that looked like a partial footprint. So I crossed the "bridge" and followed a smaller little creek for a short distance. It was almost dried up, but still had soft mud on each side of the streambed, and a few yards from that log forming the bridge, I found fresh bear tracks larger than my own size ten-and-a-half bare footprints. I fitted my own bare foot into one, just to make sure. Then, I measured how deeply that bear had been sinking into the drying mud, and compared that to my own bare foot in that same spot in the mud. The bear was sinking in over twice as far as I was, and it had twice as many feet to distribute its weight, and those were bigger than mine. I'm really glad we didn't have to argue over my groceries. If that bear had climbed on the roof of my little minivan, it would have probably collapsed on top of me.