This was too much for me.  I decided to go down into the canyon.  Forthwith I started.  It was easy to go down!  As a matter of fact it was hard not to slide down like a streak.  That long, dark, narrow aisle between the spruces had no charm for me anyway.  Suppose I should meet a bear coming up as I was sliding down!  I sheered off and left the trail, and also Copple’s tracks.  This was a blunder.  I came out into more open slope, but steeper, and harder to cling on.  Ledges cropped out, cliffs and ravines obstructed my passage and trees were not close enough to help me much.  Some long slopes of dark, mossy, bare earth I actually ran down, trusting to light swift steps rather than slow careful ones.  It was exhilarating, that descent under the shady spruces.  The lower down I got the smaller and more numerous the trees.  I could see where they left off to the dense thicket that choked the lower part of the v-shaped canyon.  And I was amazed at the size and density of that jungle of scrub oaks, maples and aspens.  From above the color was a blaze of scarlet and gold and green, with bronze tinge.

Presently I crossed a fresh bear track, so fresh that I could see the dampness of the dark earth, the rolling of little particles, the springing erect of bent grasses.  In some places big sections of earth, a yard wide had slipped under the feet of this particular bear.  He appeared to be working down.  Right then I wanted to go up!  But I could not climb out there.  I had to go down.  Soon I was under low-spreading, dense spruces, and I had to hold on desperately to keep from sliding.  All the time naturally I kept a keen lookout for a bear.  Every stone and tree trunk resembled a bear.  I decided if I met a grizzly that I would not annoy him on that slope.  I would say:  “Nice bear, I won’t hurt you!” Still the situation had some kind of charm.  But to claim I was not frightened would not be strictly truthful.  I slid over the trail of that bear into the trail of another one, and under the last big spruce on that part of the slope I found a hollow nest of pine needles and leaves, and if that bed was not still warm then my imagination lent considerable to the moment.

Beyond this began the edge of the thicket.  It was small pine at first, so close together that I had to squeeze through, and as dark as twilight.  The ground was a slant of brown pine needles, so slippery, that if I could not have held on to trees and branches I never would have kept my feet.  In this dark strip I had more than apprehensions.  What a comfortable place to encounter an outraged or wounded grizzly bear!  The manzanita thicket was preferable.  But as Providence would have it I did not encounter one.