One of the gifts mountain biking presents to us is the opportunity to cross paths with truly wild animals. My use of that adverb is meant to delineate the difference between turkeys wandering across the road and bulls that tilt their horns toward our bellies. I’ve been menaced by cows, a horse and a bison. Dogs don’t count. The “domesticated” ones pose the most trouble. The animal I found most threatening, though, was a Great Horned Owl that I happened upon in a clearing. The way it looked at me frightened me enough that I stepped off my mountain bike and backed out of the clearing, never taking my eyes off it.
In each of those instances, I represented an adversary of some sort. I was a problem.
Days ago I rode at Tiger Mountain, just outside Seattle. As I’ve noted elsewhere on this site and many times on The Paceline, it has become my favorite spot to mountain bike. The primary climbing trail at Tiger is a long green called Master Link. It will get you to most of the good starts. As I was climbing, I rounded a left-hand switchback and ahead I could see a bobcat. I was excited because I’ve only ever seen one other bobcat in the wild. This one ran up the trail in the same direction I was riding, but just past a tree stump, it turned left and noped clear out of site. As I passed its exit point, I couldn’t even see a fern sway.
Perhaps 10 minutes later, as I entered a right-hand switchback, I saw another bobcat. This one was larger and as soon as it heard me, it scaled a stack of fallen branches and walked up a fallen tree trunk. I stopped. The bobcat’s paws sat at eye level, 8 feet away, tops.
Had this bobcat considered me a threat, I can assure you, it would have had its way with me. With a single leap it could have taken me down as sure as Jason Momoa would in a WWE fight.
What made the moment a surprise was the way the bobcat looked at me. The gaze told me the bobcat felt curious, not threatened. Its stance was relaxed, not coiled. I clipped out a foot and rested it on a tree stump. It turned its head a little, checked me out, and then sat down. We looked at each other a moment. The way it took me in felt otherworldly. I’ve never had a dog look at me in that way: Curious, confident, unperturbed.
What happened next surprised me: My presence felt intrusive. I cocked my pedals and eased myself out of the scene. A moment later I turned back and the bobcat’s head tracked with my progress. To say I felt respected seems daffy. To claim the bobcat was interested in me seems more reasonable, but it doesn’t carry the full measure of what I felt. I sensed a regard that banished fear from my senses. If only we could be as inquisitive about them.
Crossing path with critters has become one of my favorite parts of any ride.