The man or the bear

some thoughts on confrontation

On Monday, an opinion piece I wrote for The Washington Post titled, “We take our dogs everywhere. Maybe we shouldn’t” was published. Not surprisingly given the subject matter, it became one of the most read articles on the site and got thousands of comments—mostly from people who were tired of seeing dogs in grocery stores, restaurants, or off-leash where they weren’t supposed to be.

I have dogs and I love dogs. The heart of the essay is more about the way dogs interfere with wildlife and wild spaces—and that dogs, too, would sometimes be happier to be left at home rather than brought to places that are hot, crowded, and overstimulating. Dogs disturbing wildlife in one of the few areas reserved for nature bothers me more than a dog in a cafe but I don’t begrudge anyone having their own feelings about where pets do and don’t belong. (I would tell you how I feel about people who feed feral cat colonies but even I won’t touch that one!)

Alone at the nature park

I started thinking about writing this essay after an experience I had going to a no-dogs-allowed-at-all-under-any-circumstances nature preserve near where I live. I didn’t see many other people there but what I did see, of course, was a man walking his dog. In the comments on the published article and elsewhere (eg. my inbox, reddit), a lot of people noted the fact that I didn’t confront the man who was breaking the rules.

What I didn’t say in the essay (you can only fit so much in 700 words) is that I thought deeply about whether or not I should. I also thought about what the potential consequences would be for me, confronting a strange man who’d already shown that he didn’t mind breaking one rule when he deemed it inconvenient. The park was sparsely populated. If things had gone wrong between us, no one would have been there to witness it or step in. Many women have made some version of this calculation. So have many LGBTQIA+ people or People of Color. Confrontation, as we’ve learned from too many stories, can be dangerous.

Earlier this year, a question started circulating online asking if people would rather meet a man or a bear when alone in the forest. It became popular enough to be a meme of sorts. Women shared stories of uncomfortable or aggressive or violent encounters they’ve had with men, ending, “This is why I choose the bear.”

From my notes after the walk:

The man seems nice enough but if he knows he’s not allowed to have a dog here and does anyway, my telling him won’t do much. I worry that even a man who seems nice could become less so when I tell him something he doesn’t want to hear. I say nothing. If he’s ignorant of the rules, he’ll see the sign that clearly says “no dogs” when he leaves. I decide to let them pass for a while and wait for nature to take her course.

Just then, another man on the trail comes up on a jog. “Excuse me,” he says to the man with a dog. “You’re not supposed to have a dog here. Maybe you didn’t know.”

The man with the dog says something I can’t hear.

The runner jogs in place during this conversation. “No worries at all,” he keeps saying, aggressively friendly. “I just wanted to make sure you knew.”

The two part ways and I see the man with the dog take out a weed pen to take a long drag. His body seems stiff. He’s not happy, having been scolded.

It’s the kind of interaction I wish I’d been able to have. But of course the stakes are different for me, alone with a man—and his dog—in the woods.

I was glad that the jogging man was willing to step up and be the person who said something to the man with the dog. (This is what people mean when they tell those in relative positions of power to “use your privilege”.) The conversation might have gone exactly the same if I’d been the one to say something. But it might not have.

The thing I love about writing short essays and opinion pieces is that they are relatively simple and to the point. But readers don’t always see how many things get left out of the story as a result. I wanted to write about dogs and their effects on wildlife—not gender politics and the awareness of danger women carry around with us. (Though I touched on the subject in an essay on Gone Girl I wrote last month for this newsletter.)

It’s important, I think, for readers to know that while good nonfiction writers will tell the truth, we cannot always tell the whole truth and tell a good story.

We have word counts. We have editors who don’t want us to go on long tangents to explain why we might not have felt safe telling a man he was breaking a rule. And, sometimes we don’t want to share everything; even people who have chosen to write about our own lives for public consumption are entitled to boundaries and privacy.

It changes the story for me to mention that the runner who said something to the man with the dog happened to be a person I’d gone on a couple dates with months before and hadn’t seen since.

The same events can be written about in many different formats with different takeaways. This is a beautiful thing about writing. It’s why I believe that there’s always room for more writers and more stories—even when our subjects are the same or similar.

It changes things again for me to tell you that I thought about thanking the runner but didn’t even say hello. All I’d wanted, after all, was to take a walk by myself. Why I’d wanted that is another story. It’s not one I want to tell.

Even here, there are many things I’m leaving out.

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Notes

I am terrifyingly close to being done with a full first draft of my novel. I am trying not to think too much about it, instead just committing to adding my little words every day as I slog toward this first finish line.

There is a new season of the podcast Normal Gossip out. If you need something light that won’t teach you much but will make you want to keep finishing household chores so you can hear how a story ends, give it a listen. Start with the early seasons. I also love this episode from season three that takes place in an escape room.

I have been writing issues of A Little Detour every week since February! It is growing but I would love to get more subscribers—free and paid alike. If an essay speaks to you, please send it to a friend or share on social media. Every little bit helps.

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You can directly support my work by getting a paid subscription to A Little Detour or buying a copy of my book Under the Henfluence.