Everything had an order to it.
In the summer of 2003, just out of college, the teller and a friend set off on their first real backcountry trip: four or five days backpacking out of Mammoth Lakes along the Ansel Adams Wilderness trail. They carried bear-proof canisters for their meals and a blue mesh laundry bag on a long rope for everything else. The plan was to hoist it out of reach every night. They spent the first nights near Shadow Lake, fishing for golden trout at lakes above 10,000 feet.
For the last two nights they camped beside Garnet Lake, next to a small snowmelt pond with a vertical cliff on its far side. The cliff sloped down on one side, so it was easy to walk around to the top. Each night they hung the food bag over the cliff edge, the rope tied off to a tree trunk at the top.
On the last night, for reasons the teller no longer remembers, they left the bear canisters on the ground away from the tent and hung only their day packs of snacks in the blue bag. That held two kinds of treats: chewy fruit candies in individual wrappers, and mini beef jerky sticks in sealed plastic.
Around one or two in the morning they woke to noises outside: a large animal, or several, moving around camp. They assumed bears were batting at the canisters. Then something brushed the tent right beside the friend's head. He grabbed a small pocket knife and wanted to go out and look. The teller talked him out of it. They weren't scared, just sensible, and eventually the teller fell back asleep.
In the morning the blue bag was no longer hanging from the cliff. They climbed around to the top and found it lying beside the tree, with a hole torn in the bottom. The day packs had been pulled out and ripped open. The rope lay neatly piled beside them. Every snack had been eaten, and what was left was arranged in two separate piles. In one were the candy wrappers, each one unwrapped rather than torn. In the other were the jerky wrappers, each sliced open with a single straight cut down the middle and the jerky removed. Their deodorant and toiletries hadn't been touched.
For years he told it as a funny bear story. Now he isn't so sure. Hauling a rope up hand over hand leaves a pile. A bear pulling it would surely back away and leave a long line. Opening those candies takes two hands and a fingernail. Slicing a small jerky packet that cleanly needs one hand to hold it and another to cut. A bear, he thinks, would just have eaten them wrapper and all.
He knows they heard large animals in the night, that something brushed the tent, and that whatever raided the bag left everything in tidy order. He still calls it the best trip of his life.