Lost in the Woods: How My Son and I Became Wilderness Warriors
What Happened When A Bear Crossed Our Path
Me and my son navigated a journey in the wilderness a few days ago. The hike tested our survival skills against a black bear. If you're curious about our misadventure, click the link below to read our story:
http://claytoncraddock.com/lost-in-the-woods-how-my-son-and-i-became-wilderness-warriors/
Fun story, and I'm very glad it ended well. My own reading of it, though, is that your bear probably knows a lot more about human behavior than you gave it credit for, and showed itself on purpose as a message to a pair of intruders that they were out of bounds. For as much as I have disliked being confined to marked trails myself in my own wanderings in past years, I realize that it is the better part of valor to assume that the trails are there for a reason: specifically, to keep urban visitors in an alien environment from doing harm either to it or to themselves.
From everything I've heard and read about bears, in the case of a black bear you probably were never in any real danger from this one at all (as opposed to your grizzly, kodiak or polar bears, say), unless something you did posed a threat (such as wandering off the trail, which was why he or she was polite enough to warn you to go back where you belong and get out of your otherwise harmless neighbor's home territory....)
I expect the bear was as worried as you were about too close an encounter, if not more so.