The original thread was about railfanning in remote Colorado or other areas. It was good to point this out; as many here have said the key is awareness. You can choose not to go where bears might be (and miss a lot, and they might still come to you anyway), or you can prepare as much as you are able and leave the rest to God.
I have been within less than a dozen feet of alive unrestrained adult bears multiple times; the most disconcerting is to find it out later. The most frightening was discovering myself four feet from a cub and having no idea where mother was..... In all of these cases I knew the bears were around and was prepared mentally and watching, but still came unexpectedly close. In all these cases both bears and I lived to tell about it with no parties harmed. Maybe I was just "lucky"; or maybe like in an old Western saying the man born to hang never drowns. I did pay attention to local information and stayed aware. That should be the take-away here. It cannot be said too often.
And bears are not the only reason to be watchful, especially when a train might be in view and commanding attention.
We worked once in a remote area (the access road was surveyed as a logging railroad grade interestingly) and were warned to secure our work site as the bears were always around, and always looking for a way "in" (this was a residence). We never saw one. However, the big warning (don't go exploring without going armed) was for the aggressive wild pigs, which we did see. The pigs had nearly cleaned out the deer population until the caretakers started thinning them (60 in one year).
There is no substitute for being informed and aware. As one old timer told me, "This ain't Walt Disney."
Timothy
