A Wild Walk in the Woods.

It was a sunny morning back in the spring of 1979. I was staying at my Mothers Cottage on Starvation Lake near Mancelona Michigan when I decided to go for a short walk in the woods. The woods are thick in this part of Michigan, about 40 miles NE of Traverse City.

I walked about a quarter-mile down the dirt road before I entered the woods, opposite the houses on the lake. It was nice to listen to the birds and walk amongst the shadows of the trees. There were squirrels everywhere. Very relaxing!

It’s amazing how calming it is to be enveloped by nature, “I really should do this more often” I thought to myself. I meandered along through the trees, paying attention to subtle land marks, cognizant of the fact that I will need to find my way home.

It wasn’t too long before I came to a clearing in the woods. It was a large opening, perhaps 500 feet in diameter. I decided to walk through the clearing in order to view and smell all the wildflowers.

While walking through the flowers I noticed, of course, the field was full of bees. It’s natural, and beautiful to experience bees in a situation like this, but for some reason one bee kept flying around my head. I tried swatting and shooing it away but he continued to fly around my head.

It really was annoying and a little disconcerting that this bee wouldn’t go away. So I started running in order to distance myself from the bee, stopping after about 25 feet or so.

After about 5 seconds I noticed the bee was flying around my head again. Wow, this little guy likes me. I swatted at him a few more times and then started running again. This time I didn’t stop until about 50 feet, assuming he surely wouldn’t follow me this far.

Of course, 20 seconds later here comes my little friend. I’m thinking to myself “this is really weird, why is this bee following me”. I started running in a different direction this time and went about 150 feet, thinking I’m a half football field away, that should do it.

After a minute he shows up again, circling around my head. Why is this happening? He seems attracted to my hair. At this point I decided to take off my T-shirt and wrap it around my head and run away even further.

When I finally stopped running I stood in one place with my hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath. After a couple of minutes I realized the bee was not following me anymore. What a relief!

Okay, I need to get out of all these flowers and head back into the woods, I’d had enough of bees for the day. The problem was, I wasn’t sure what direction to go back into the woods. All that running in different directions caused me to be disoriented as to where I was when I entered the field.

I walked toward the closest trees and headed in what I hoped was the right direction. I knew when I originally entered the field I was only about a quarter mile away from the road, so I shouldn’t have too far to go. If I didn’t see the road after about five or 10 minutes of walking I would know I was going in the wrong direction.

Sure enough, no road, so I turned left and started walking in that direction. It was near noon, so the sun wasn’t going to help me find my way back. Checking the moss on the trees would not help me either because I didn’t know if I needed to go East, West, North, or South. At this point I realized I was lost. All I could do was keep trying until I found the road.

I kept trying different directions hoping eventually to accidentally find the road, not really a good plan, but it was the only one I had. I knew there were dozens of houses on the other side of the road, unfortunately, on this side you could walk miles without seeing a house or a road. It was imperative that I head in the right direction.

After what seemed to be about an hour, I heard a loud noise. I recognized it, it was a natural gas well near the Cottage, relieving pressure, something it did several times a day. I turned toward the sound and could barely see the tip of the flame that shoots out of the well above the trees. I knew the well was about a half-mile from the cottage, so I considered my options as to where the cottage might be and headed in that direction.

Finally, I found the dirt road. It was easy to figure which way to go on the road, I had to go right. It took me another 15 to 20 minutes, but there it was, I found our almost hidden driveway leading down to the cottage on the lake. Standing in the kitchen, I was surprised when I looked at the clock and realized I’d been gone over 3 hours.

The first thing I did was crack open a bottle of beer and relax. It’s a little stressful when you’re lost in the woods. After a light lunch I decided to take a shower, after all, I had worked up a good sweat with all that running.

While I was in the shower I noticed my ‘new’ shampoo said “honey-based” on the label and I started laughing out loud. That’s why the bee was circling my head, it was the damn shampoo. ‘Ker-plunk’ was the sound of the shampoo bottle landing in the trash canister in the bathroom. I won’t be buying that shampoo again.

It was a few months later, after I had returned to the downriver area where I lived, near Detroit, that I noticed the ‘honey-based’ shampoo was no longer on the shelves at my local Target store.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had an experience with an aggressively persistent bumblebee.

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Thanks for reading my article.