a ghostly hiking story

so, adam and matt went hiking the other night. it was dark. when they got home, adam told me the following story:

they drove the spiffy new ride up to far north bicentennial park (about five miles away), unloaded the neah, and headed up under the setting sun. they turned off the main trail after a couple miles and onto a side one (read: game path) and got to a point where the trail crossed an iced over swamp. by this time it was dark/twilight/vampire hunting hour and they decided that crossing the ice swamp in the dark, foggy mist probably wasn't the funnest plan. so they stopped and stood around as one is want to do next to an ice swamp, when the neah monster began barking into the dark.

matt and adam were annoyed at her disruption of the peace for a few minutes.  she continued barking. simultaneously, the boys realized that perhaps she was actually barking at something. they slowly turned in the direction of her furor and stared into the darkness. after close to a minute, they saw what neah did--a dark moving shadow out over the swamp.  adam turned to matt and asked "did you see that?!" to which matt replied "yes".  "is it moving," adam asked. "yes," matt replied.

in the following 20 seconds, adam fumbled, reaching for the bear spray--only to realize he couldn't reach it in gloves (20F) and pulled the gloves off frantically. matt pulled the head lamps out of the back pack. the 20 seconds felt like minutes as they prepared for the shadow.  they turned the head lamps on and peered into the darkness toward the shadow.....

turns out, neah, the still barking protector, isn't an idiot, there was a large shaped object looking at them in the dark. the bear slowly moved away into the shadows, eyes still fixed on the three of them.

just kidding. they still couldn't tell what the hell it was because of the mist...but they could see its eyes shining in the dark---and based on its height there's a 95% change it was in fact a bear.  and as it moved away, all they could see was still the amorphous shadow with gleaming eyes creeping into the dark.

here's to neah, the Protector, who kept them from getting eaten.