Free 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston

see me and wasn’t coming to pay a social visit. He was looking scrawny and wanted my food for his first big post-hibernation dinner. I had dropped my little purple pack at the tent door and, looking at it there, straight in the sights of the bear, I realized what I had to do. I grabbed the food pack and, escaping the tent with the bear only fifteen feet away, dashed off to my right. My bare feet beat the hard ground as I scampered around the back of the tent and, leaping over a downed tree, landed directly in a snowbank where first my left foot, then my right, punctured the icy crust. Pain seared across my left foot, and when I extracted it from the snow, I saw that I’d cut my arch on a protruding branch of the fallen tree. A glance over my shoulder told me I had no time to spare for first aid. I bounded off into the snowy forest, abrading and numbing my feet as I went.
    Scouting the nearby trees for possible food-hanging positions, I didn’t see anything that was at least eight feet off the ground, five feet from a trunk, and strong enough to catch my bag if I tossed it up on a branch. Normally, I would use some string and haul the bag over a high, sturdy limb, but I didn’t have time for that tactic now. I circled around clockwise and ended up in front of my tent, then off a few paces to the west. The bear followed my every move in the forest, and I never put more than thirty feet between us. I finally noticed a large tree that had toppled some years ago, leaving a tangle of thick roots jutting into the air. They weren’t high enough to be out of reach, but I could at least lash my bag to the roots by the straps and go put on my boots before coming back to find a better spot for the food. I rushed over to the upended tree, wrapped the straps around three gnarled roots protruding four feet in the air, and twisted the bag down behind another root so the bear couldn’t easily get to it. I then gingerly pranced back to the tent on my numbed feet.
    Sitting in the tent doorway, I briefly checked the cuts on my left foot before cramming on my sopping-wet boots and lighting off to the downed tree once more. In the thirty seconds of my absence, the bear had taken my food bag in his teeth and, yanking it back and forth, shaken the straps off the roots. As I watched the bear easily snap the root to which I had tied the most securely attached strap, I understood I was in dire straits. I had dipped deeply into my energy supply to get to my campsite, and I needed nourishment before I could even attempt to retreat to my car. If the bear made off with that bag, I would be stranded. The bear was already twenty feet along the length of the tree’s horizontal trunk, with the purple pack in his jaws, when I came to the conclusion that, with my life possibly at stake, I had to get that bag back—by whatever means necessary. I broke off a yardstick’s length of tree root, held it like a club in my left hand, hopped up on the trunk of the fallen tree, and waved my weapon over my head, roaring at the top of my lungs, “Give me my food back, bear!” I’m not sure what response I was expecting, but my body trembled with fear when the bear stopped, turned his head back over his right shoulder, then spun on his hind feet to face me at ten paces. I’d gotten his attention, all right, and now we had ourselves a showdown.
    I snarled and shouted, waved my stick in the air, and yelled again, even louder, “Give me back my FOOD!” Like a dog questioning his master’s order, the bear tilted his head quizzically to the left, and I thought I could see his forehead wrinkle. At his pause, I gathered my courage and began stomping on the log. Shouting anew, I took a pounding step toward the motionless bear, then another, and a third, commanding, “You picked the wrong hungry hiker to steal his food—DROP IT!” At the last word, I jumped up and slammed both my boots down on the tree trunk. The bear dropped the food bag, lumbered off the side of