I was getting ready to set out for Valentine Lake some 4.8 miles away and 1,919 feet higher at an elevation of 7,881 feet.

I parked a few minutes earlier at the Sherwin Creek trailhead just southeast of Mammoth Lakes. It was a tad usual for eastern Sierra trailheads as it has a cinder-block pit toilet just a few yards from where the forest started getting thick.

I had just finished putting on my backpack, locking the car, and adjusting my hiking poles.

I was making a call while I still had cell service to reaffirm with Cynthia my hike destination for the day and when she could expect me to get a call that I had gotten back safely.

Just as Cynthia answered the phone and I said “hi,” I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye. A black bear was coming toward me from around the pit toilet. It was perhaps 30 feet away.

This wasn’t my first encounter with a bear in the wild. But it was now the closest.

The first thing that popped into my mind was the fact I had food in my backpack. The second was not to do anything to startle the bear.

In a matter of seconds, the bear was 20 feet away.

I hurriedly told Cynthia I had a bear nearby and I had to go.

As I hung up, it dawned on me if she was alarmed she might call back which may not be a good thing considering how jarring my ringtone is.

The bear kept coming.

I admit for a fleeting second thinking that this might make a good picture. That thought was gone a second later when the bear was 10 feet away passing behind another vehicle.

Granted, the bear didn’t appear to be agitated, overtly hungry or even acknowledging I was standing there.

It continued to casually stroll toward me. I stood still and tried to stand as tall as possible. I could hear my heartbeat as the bear walked within about a yard of where I was standing. It didn’t turn its head. Instead, it kept going until it cleared the parking lot and reached the trees, disappearing in the opposite direction I would be going.

Later, based on the length of the bear, its approximate weight was probably 150 or so pounds.

Black bear attacks on humans are fairly rare. But clearly — given how fast bears move, their size, the fact their claws are effective at ripping their meals apart, sporting a bite capable of snapping a spinal cord, and pound for pound is considered three times stronger than humans — one should not tempt fate.

It wasn’t my scariest bear encounter by far. That happened years prior while bicycling up Spooner Summit behind Gary Pogue, who had startled a bear with two cubs as he passed.

As Gary picked up his pace as we headed uphill on racing bicycles, the mother bear zeroed in on me, intent to give me a piece of her rage.

It wasn’t wise to stop. With 700cc tires, making a hard right into the bear’s stomping grounds would have been insane. And flipping a hard left turn to head back downhill would have been recklessly suicidal, given I was bicycling on the shoulder as traffic whizzed by on Highway 50 at 60 mph.

There was only one option, and it wasn’t good, given in my wildest dream as I couldn’t hang for even two seconds with the winners of the polka dot jersey for being the proverbial goat in the mountain stages of the Tour de France.

Nevertheless, I started pedaling so hard I feared the pressure was going to break the crankshaft. The bear kept coming. It took the incessant honking of a passing semi-truck piloted by a driver who clearly saw what was going on to end her advance.

Nor was the Mammoth Lakes interaction the most startling bear encounter. That happened hiking Mono Pass out of Yosemite Park.

A doe zipped across the trail behind me, making enough rustling noise passing through the brush that it got me to stop and turnaround. As the doe disappeared downhill, a buck came out of the trees from uphill at full speed.

I went to pull my camera out of my pocket if by chance a third deer would follow suit, making it an ideal subject for a video. But before I could tap the video, there came a black bear in hot pursuit. It wasn’t “running.”  It was more like an all-out gallop.

There is little doubt in my mind that bears can indeed haul their proverbial backside at 30 mph, as the experts say they can make Olympic sprinters look like slowpokes.

The two deer and bear had passed perhaps 50 feet away.

Had I startled the bear, it would have been on me in seconds flat.

Given my interaction with bears and one really not-so-close but close enough encounter with a mountain lion in the mountains above Death Valley, you can understand why I think people are reckless for trying to get selfies with bison in the wild.

Even so, a mother walking with her husband and their three young children in the Everglades National Park in Florida have — for me anyway — set a new level for reckless and clueless behavior. Another hiker, obviously looking first and foremost for Internet worthy posting videos and not the safety of fellow humans, videoed the incident instead of making a concerted effort to cease their reckless behavior. The mother had her kids pose at the side of a hiking trail while an adult alligator was less than 10 feet behind them. The kids looked a bit apprehensive as the mother urges them to step back to get a better shot.

The alligator makes a noise, of which you’re told by a post-shoot commentator that it is a sign that the reptile is getting a bit annoyed. Yet, the mother insists they get the shot.

Chalk it up as another example of the smartphone making people stupider and the siren song of fleeting Internet fame compromising rational behavior.

This column is the opinion of Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Courier or 209 Multimedia.