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Just By Accident: Adventures of a Modern Vagabond

by Ben Benson

141 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0259; ISBN 1-55212-590-4; US$16.50, C$19.00, EUR13.50, £9.50

Fascinating and adventurous stories of 25 years of unusual travel.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book Just By Accident: Adventures of a Modern Vagabond provides an entertaining and unique look into the life of a modern wilderness vagabond. It is filled with true wilderness adventures encountered by "Backcountry Ben" and allows many of us to catch a glimpse of what lies beyond where most of us will ever go. While Just By Accident: Adventures of a Modern Vagabond is autobiographical in nature, it is more than just the story of one man's life of travel and adventures in the backcountry. It is also about interpersonal relationships that were formed and fostered by Ben's odyssey in the wilderness. It is about the forest ranger trekking the backcountry, manning a fire lookout, fighting a forest fire, or writing a recreational plan. It is about the National Park Service employee riding horseback in one of our beautiful national parks and helping both young and old, novice and experienced, gain a greater enjoyment from the outdoors. It is about the fish and game people who protect our wildlife from potential poachers; who improve habitat, conduct biological surveys, and collect data, not just on endangered species, but on the myriad of other creatures which inhabit our forests and wildlands. It is about the entire guiding and tourist industry that brings people to visit our parks and forests, hopefully to return to their urban dwellings with a fresh point of view about nature.

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About the Author Ben Benson, a skilled and courageous outdoorsman, was nicknamed "Backcountry Ben" when employed with the U.S. Forest Service in Alaska. He has not only traveled much of the world, but has explored it with a true sense of free-spirited adventure and a sincere love for nature. These explorations have included areas ranging from Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska to Zimbabwe, Africa. During these travels, he has been able to capture on film many incredible sights that most of us would never see in our entire lifetime. These pictures are now available for preview and purchase on his website at www.backcountryben.com A few of the many roles he has filled are park ranger, hunting guide, wilderness mountaineer, photographer, boat painter, deckhand on a Mississippi River towboat (following the footsteps of Mark Twain), town manager, financial consultant, and a Navy Corpsman with the U.S. Marine Corps. Just By Accident: Adventures of a Modern Vagabond was compiled in 1999 after ten years of work to provide the opportunity for readers to enjoy, and perhaps even learn from, Ben's adventures as he explored the Appalachian Trail, survived the grasp of PTSD, faced bears and other wildlife in the wilderness, fell on an ice axe when alone on the Eagle Glacier, and much, much more.

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A Bear Before Breakfast

I built a fire in the stove and put the coffee on to boil. Taking my rifle with me, I opened the rear tent flap and stepped out to get more firewood.

I came face to face with a female brown bear and her two cubs! They were less than twenty yards away and saw me at the same instant. A female bear with cubs is one of the most dangerous animals alive and I knew I was in a very ticklish situation. I felt like someone had just poured a pitcher of ice water down by back.

My training flashed through my mind: "Try to appear larger than the bear. Don't run or try to sneak away. Don't make eye contact because that will agitate it. Make some noise so she knows where and what you are.The goal is to get the bear to leave."

I waved my hands above my head and yelled at her. "Go away! Go away! Go on, get out of here!"

It was all to no avail. This bear had apparently not read the manual. She stood up on her hind legs, which signaled her intention to fight, and looked straight at me. She must have been at least nine feet tall.

I kept yelling and waving my hands, all the while thinking, "I don't want to shoot that bear! I don't want to shoot that bear!" This went on for what seemed an eternity, but actually it was only six or seven minutes. Suddenly she dropped to all fours and charged! Her charge was so quick that I had no opportunity to even shoulder my rifle.

I shot from the hip, and the bullet from my H&H .375 Magnum tore through her right shoulder. The bear went down but was still alive and struggling to get up.

Now I had time to aim and shot it in the left shoulder. The bear was still down but definitely not dead yet. She scrabbled around in a circle in her efforts to regain her feet and take a bite out of me . . .

. . . When at length I had calmed down and regained my composure, I remembered the group back at the sleeping area a mile away. Surely they must have heard the shots, but since I had a reputation as somewhat of a prankster, nobody came to investigate. They probably figured it was just Ben up to his usual tricks.

A little smile tugged at the corners of my mouth as a wonderful practical joke came to mind. If it was a trick they expected, then a trick they would get . . .

Halibut Cove Lagoon

. . . Unfortunately, Bill had not trimmed the boat when he loaded my supplies. In other words, the weight was not distributed evenly throughout the length of the craft. He had loaded it too heavily in the stern, which raised the bow and made it difficult to see where I was going. I had thought Bill was a better seaman than that.

To compound the problem, Ginger was frightened and insisted on sitting close to me by the tiller in the stern. This added more weight in exactly the wrong place, making the bow come up even higher.

I had to be alert for flotsam and jetsam, and to keep from snagging on things like crab and shrimp pots. But with the bow of the boat limiting my view, that is exactly what happened.

I was about halfway down Gull Island and was turning west to get a little protection from the wind. The boat had started to take on a little water, and both Ginger and I were soaked and cold. Suddenly the shaft of my propeller caught the line of a crab pot and the transom went down about three feet!

The crab pot weighed about 150 pounds and the Boston Whaler was awash in water. Had it not been for the double hull, we likely would have gone to the bottom. As it was, the water was up to my waist . . .

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Catalogue Information

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