During the 4th of july weekend of 2008 the person who left that note on my car stole some of my belongings (not only the ones he mentions in the note but also items that had nothing to do with food, such as batteries, non-smelly toiletry, house keys, etc). For decades i have left items on the roof of my car where there are no bear boxes available, and noone touched them. It is a sign of the times (the exponentially rising number of amateurs who are full of certainties about what is right and what is wrong) that now you can't do that without having some nosy idiot full of himself mess with them.

Needless to say, this self-righteous wilderness expert did not bother to sign his note or leave any way to track him down. He simply ran away like a coward and he's probably telling all his friends how smart and wise he was (omitting of course that he made sure nobody would ever find out his name and address). I checked with the rangers and, sure enough, he never reported my car. (Or, the rangers said, if he did report my car, he was told that there was nothing wrong with what i did, and therefore no report was filed).

If he is a friend of yours, I don't want him to go to jail, just to learn a lesson or two: 1. unless someone's life is in danger, you *never* take the law in your hands (if you think that somebody is doing something wrong, call the police - we don't want self-appointed vigilantes going around and deciding what we cannot do); 2. This time he only stole $200 worth of stuff. Next time he might pull out a gun and kill someone because he is so convinced of always being right and of knowing the absolute truth; 3. you should realize that you are neither the only human being on this planet nor (most likely) the smartest nor (in 50% of cases) in the 50% that is smarter than the other 50%.

Someone also needs to tell him that all rules are relative. I do not doubt that he is in good faith believing what he believes about bears (or anything else in life). But he will be shocked the day he starts traveling outside his backyard and finds out that rules change dramatically from place to place (yes, about the very same animal). Those rules are mostly opinions, and there is no absolute consensus. For example, in Yellowstone (a park with slightly more bears than the desert-like Shepherd Pass trailhead, where no bears have been spotted in ages) the rangers recommend to keep the food in the trunk of the car. This man will have a fit the first time he travels to Yellowstone and reads that sign. (See the sign).

Over more than 20 years countless rangers must have seen that i left smelly items on the roof of my car, and none of them ever left me any kind of note. What made this untrained wilderness user think that he is knows better and that he was entitled to take away all my belongings?