Do ya ever chat with Europeans and listen to them complain about “wilderness” and “wild animals?” A friend of mine lived in Heidelberg for a year and during that time she noted several occasions on which the populace was encouraged to go out into the forest and “Pick up the garbage, like fallen leaves, branches, etc”. Can’t have that messing up the forest, nosirree!

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Hedgehogs are not the same as grizzly bears. If your country does not support wildlife that can kill you, it has no wilderness. It has parks.

A friend of mine used to say that if you go camping and shoot a gun off and anyone else can hear it, you’re not really camping.

Welcome to my world. This is nine hours drive from here, including ferry time, but I can walk from my apartment downtown to an area with bears in it in about two and a half hours. Forty minutes on the bus if you’re lazy.

Behold Ucluelet, world-renowned destination for stormwatching, for obvious reasons: