The bear was brown and it was big. My friend Bruce and I stared at the broad bulk of its shoulders as it stood sideways to us perhaps 50 yards away, sniffing the air. For moments we couldn't move. We had just emerged from heavy brush into a small opening in the woods and come upon it. Had the bear caught our scent? Would it turn toward us? All we knew for certain was that our easygoing afternoon hike had turned into a moment of cold fear.

We were college students working summer jobs in a small lodge in northeast Utah's Flaming Gorge recreation area east of the Uinta mountains — a landscape of thickly wooded ridges dropping into grassy meadows and open woods. After weeks of talking about it, we had finally gone hiking after our morning shift, parking just up from the lodge to walk into the timber above a rugged canyon.

In every encounter with one of nature's predators, a person's first response is shock, followed by fear. Even when rationality begins to kick in, there is no clear strategy for survival. Each encounter is different.

Years after that encounter in Utah, my wife and I went on a camping trip with some friends in the High Sierra east of Stockton, Calif. After a day of fishing in a nearby stream, we talked beside the fire late into the evening over some cheap wine. Ready at last to retire to our tents, we put all the leftover food inside our cars as a safety measure.

Exhausted, I fell asleep quickly, only to stir hours later at a low, snuffling noise outside the tent. Half-asleep, vaguely irritated at the interruption, I lifted my head just as the sound began to fade away. Reassured, I soon fell back asleep.

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When I came out of the tent that morning, refreshed and cheerful, my friend and his wife were sitting nervously near the fire pit.

"Did you hear that bear last night?" he said. "It was right outside our tent. I thought it was going to break through. All I had was my hunting knife."

I told him I'd heard some sounds, but hadn't been sure what they were. Whatever had caused them had left quickly, so I'd gone back to sleep, I said.

All of us soon took a quick survey of the campsite, trying to determine the bear's path. With the food still in our cars, we wondered what could have made it linger. As we made one last circuit around the area, we noticed something behind a thick pine away from the fire pit; it was the large thermos we'd been pouring wine from the night before. We'd missed it in the dark. Its outer top was off. On the inner seal over a wine stain, was the tooth mark of a bear.

I've had my share of encounters with bears, but I've never seen a mountain lion in the wild. So I can only imagine the terror Jim and Nell Hamm felt when on Jan. 24 he was attacked by one in California's Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park near Arcata. From all indications, the two of them did everything they could to fend it off. After the cougar grabbed her husband, Nell Hamm beat the animal with a large stick and stabbed it with a fountain pen — the only other weapon they had — until the animal loosed its hold and left. Later, California wildlife officials found the cougar with its mate and killed them both.

Anyone who has hiked much in the wild knows most of the tips about what to do when confronted by a predator — show no fear, make yourself large, shout, bang pans together, do everything you can to scare the animal off. But if the animal attacks, what to do becomes much less clear. With bears, who are far too large to resist after a certain point, it may be best to play dead, some say; with other animals, such as mountain lions, fighting back may be more effective, say others.

In the end, you can only go with your intuition. That day decades ago in Utah, Bruce and I finally came out of our shock. We looked at each other as the bear's head gradually began to turn our way. Without speaking, we began to step back quietly, inching 10, 20, 40 yards back into the brush. When minutes later we finally emerged from the thicket into a large meadow, we turned and ran, hearing nothing behind us.

In this part of Oregon and in nearby Northern California, every foray into the mountains carries some risk of meeting a predator. For many hikers, the possibility of spying a bear or mountain lion from a distance is tantalizing, even though most would recoil at a closer encounter.

For the Hamms, the best response was to resist. For Bruce and me that day in Utah, stealth and flight were best. On that camping trip in California's Sierra Nevada with my wife, a groggy passivity was sufficient. All turned out to be right for the occasion.

Nature is full of surprises. That is part of its mystery — the wild undercurrent that draws us to the forests and mountains again and again. Always, though, there is an element of risk. And that is how it must be. We can never forget that what gave us life can just as easily take it away. In nature, nothing can ever be taken for granted.

Steve Dieffenbacher is a Mail Tribune page designer/copy editor. Reach him at 776-4498 or sdieffenbacher@mailtribune.com