As life would have it…..I am a City Girl.  Ingrained.  I grew up in the city.  Played on the streets under the street lights, and such…. Attended school right in the heart of downtown. I lived in the urbania until I was 25 years old.

A quarter century of my life went by… and I didn’t know anything much about nature…… Like the fact that there are actually different “kinds” of cows.

My first adult visit to the “outer skirts” was for …… a good ol’ cook out. We were sitting outside, with a corn field in view… & I asked if that was popcorn… like the “Orville Redenbacher” kind. The locals got a good chuckle out of that, I’ll tell you.

I really didn’t even know about different kinds of flowers… or birds. I knew a rose. I called red birds….”red birds” and the same for the blue ones. Be that as it may, I could tell a robin. I’d sing the song… “…….goes bob, bob, bobbin’ along….”

At any rate… clearly…. CLEARLY……I am not the nature fanatic. I love to take walks and enjoy the beauty of it…. and photograph it. See it. Smell it. But, if we are having a campfire…… let’s say…. I walk away with 438 bug bites. Everyone else… zilch.

I think too much of that nature stuff can be bad for you. Wonder Bread & Mayonnaise is the best solution to life’s woes. I’ve long said… my idea of roughing it is staying at a Howard Johnson’s with a black and white TV.

So…. please…. don’t make me camp. And….REALLY don’t make be backpack for days on end without a shower. Oh no.

Which brings up the tragic news of the backpacker killed in Yellowstone by a Grizzly Bear yesterday.  Very sad, and I absolutely hate to hear when such a thing as this has occurred.   But I gotta’ say.…. I am savvy enough to know how to avoid such an attack…. DON’T freaking walk where there are Grizzly Bears.  If I could’ve talked to the guy before he went out on the trails… I would have told him just that.

Before you take that next big walk in the woods… think twice.  Heck, think three times.  Instead, belly up to the counter…. have a bowl of mashed potatoes or some kind of white, pasty food…… and turn on the Nature Channel.  Trust me on this one.   This City Girl wouldn’t steer you wrong.