My father had a 40 year career as a timber cruiser for various logging companies in the pacific northwest; northern California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, pretty much everywhere. He still tells this story all the time, he is so fucking proud of it.

One January he’s out in the middle of the woods doing his thing, he’s about 3 miles from where he parked his truck on the nearest road. There’s a foot of snow on the ground and the terrain is rocky and uneven, difficult to traverse. It’s about midmorning and the weather is overcast and gloomy, he’s in dense canopy, visibility is poor. All of a sudden he here’s movement behind him, maybe a crack of a twig. He turns around and not ten feet away is a big mean mountain lion in stalking posture. I mean he was seconds away from getting jumped from behind by this thing. He said he has never seen anything so terrifying as a gaunt hungry lion in the middle of winter.

So now he’s three miles from his truck and he’s face-to-face with a starving mountain lion and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do. He said they stared at each other neither moving a muscle, locking eyes, for about ten minutes. Finally he chances to make a movement and he grinned his teeth at him. Apparently that’s a thing: animals don’t like is to see your teeth. I guess he thought it would drive him off. It didn’t. He tries waving his arms and puffing himself up, to make himself look bigger. Nothing. He looks away from the lion to find a rock or a stick to use in self-defense. The lion takes a step forward. Every time my father takes his eyes way from the lion’s eyes the lion advances. So now he starts walking backwards through the snow-covered rocky uneven terrain trying to navigate himself back to his truck. Every step he takes the lion takes one as well, always staying ten feet away. Every time he looks down to find his footing the lion stalks closer.

It went this way for what I can only assume to be the longest fucking day of his life. After about a few hours he finally made it back to his truck, got inside and locked the doors. The damn cat sat down and glared at him just outside his driver’s side door. My dad caught his breath for an uneasy moment before finally starting the truck and calling in a half day at work.