There's a bear!

(not the bear we saw)

One Friday last fall, my wife had a big win in a case.  The jury and some shenanigans took longer than we had anticipated, but late in the day we hopped in our car and headed off to Wyoming to catch the tail end of a conference.  The next day, after conference things wrapped up, we took our son Ben for a hike up to Phelps Lake.

We parked at the Rockefeller Preserve and hiked in. We made it to the lake, had a little picnic while chatting with some very nosey chipmunks, then started back.  We were most of the way to the road when I heard a very weird sound...RRRRRR.  I thought it was a car with engine problems.

Ben was on my shoulders, and my wife was in the lead when we came around a bend in the trail and a rather large bear ambled out from behind a rock.  It was maybe 15 feet from my wife and definitely noticed her.

My wife is very good under pressure.  Without turning her head, she said to me, "You start backing up with Ben." and after I did, proceeded to back slowly and calmly away from the bear, until we were around the bend.

We discussed waiting for the bear to leave, but opted to take the long way, a path that would add a couple of miles to our trip.  Feeling mostly out of danger, we were happy but alert, adrenaline dissipating.

Ahead, I could see some folks headed our way.  "Hey honey, here come some hikers.  Should we tell them there's a bear back there?  I mean...it might be best for us if there were other tasty humans in between us and him."

"Ha!  Right.  Maybe so."

Of course we were only joking, but Ben was having none of that.  Maybe his parents were horrible selfish people, but he wasn't.  The couple approaching us were hardly within earshot when he started saying loudly, "There's a bear!  We saw a bear!"

And that's the story of how my son with autism demonstrated his moral superiority to me.