In Verbatim, locals share a story at length. Here is the compelling story told by Emma Amiad at January’s “Out Loud Story Slam” event:

“It’s been my good fortune to have a whole lifetime of being out in nature and camping, even when I was a very small child and some of you here have heard some of my camping stories before.

Tonight, I’m going to talk about a time when I was a little bit older. This was in my 20s, and I had a VW bus, which was very popular in the ’60s.

I took out the seats and I turned it into a camper. I built my own little platform bed, and I put some stuff inside, and then I actually put curtains around it for some privacy. It was very, very cute.

Then I went camping everywhere.

And the personality that went with me for camping was my cat.

Now, most cats don’t like to be in cars, but somehow my Siamese, Princess, decided that this wasn’t a car, it was a moving room.

I’m sure that’s what was in her mind, because she had no problem being in the van, but would still not go into a car.

She had all the stuff she needed. Under the bed was her food and her water and her little litter box, and she was just fine.

So we would go out camping quite often, and on this particular trip, we had decided to go camping up this long, long mountain road.

The maps in those days were nothing like what we have online…. and actually, the people online don’t do the right job for that either, now that I think about it.

But it was a very narrow, very scary road.

Straight down on one side, straight up on the other, very narrow.

So I’m going along and going along, it was all day, I was getting very tired. It was stressful.

Those of you who have ever owned a VW bus know that they can actually just blow over in bad weather, so not that stable.

I didn’t even get near the campground I had chosen for the night, but I saw a sign for camping, and it was almost dark, and I thought it’s good enough, whatever it is.

So I pulled in there. I had my peanut butter and jelly sandwich dinner, fed the cat, and I said, we’re done. I’m gonna go to bed.

So I crawled into my sleeping bag. The cat usually slept kind of right in my arm.

So we got settled, and a little while later, the cat was getting up and fussing. So I looked up and she was in a prairie dog position. You know what I’m talking about? Just this little bit of her butt on the bed and everything else straight up.

And she’s turning… and she’s turning… until she’s turning all the way around looking out of the van. What the hell?

So I said, “Come on, get under the covers,” and I put her under there and she popped right back up.

Well, that’s ridiculous.

So I thought, “Well, I’m going to take a look outside.”

It was about that time that I realized I hadn’t closed the curtains because it was dark when we got there, and I just didn’t think about it.

So I look out the window and I see something very large,… very fuzzy… and very black.

It was a black bear.

The black bear didn’t even look at me. He was focused on the cat.

The cat was focused on the bear.

And I thought, do bears eat cats? I think they eat berries and things…

And so I was very, very worried about this time, and kind of freaked out.

Bears can do a lot of things, damage, bad things.

So I kept trying to get the cat to get under the covers so the bear would maybe go away.

But the two just kept circling. The bear going around the van. The cat circling around watching the bear.

This is so weird. And then I thought, maybe… maybe it’s a very young bear; it’s never seen a cat.

Certainly, my cat has never seen a bear. Maybe they’re just kind of checking each other out.

But it was getting really freaky, and then… the bear started pushing.

Now, if you’ve read up on bears, you know they can actually open cars, they can rip cars, they can toss cars over, and a VW van is good for that.

And I thought, this is bad, this is scary.

So I got down between the two seats in the front, down underneath on the floor, and then worked my way up into the driver’s seat. And I looked around, and I quickly turned on the ignition, slammed on the lights and started beating on the horn.

I mean, what else could I do?

I hope there were no other campers there.

I never knew if they were, because there was no one there in the morning.

But at that point, the bear kind of eased off and he got into the corner of the lights, not right directly in it. He kind of did this sort of thing, like he didn’t like that.

And I kept hammering on the horn, and finally he ambled off into the forest.

By that time, I’m practically having a heart attack. Oh my god. I don’t know what could happen. I’m so glad he’s gone. I hope he doesn’t come back.

But I calmed myself down, and I decided, okay, I’m just going to go to bed. I’m going to finish the night. I’m going to sleep.

I turn around to get back into bed, and there’s Princess sound asleep, as if nothing happened.”