Editor's note: This column was originally published March 18, 2009.

Ask anyone who has been camping or fishing with me about my fascination -- OK, some call it fear -- of bears.

I'm not sure when this "wonder" of bears started, but I'll blame a cheesy grizzly-goes-crazy-kills-everything-in-sight TV movie I saw as a kid.

A resurgence of my fascination with these creatures came in the early 1990s when I read Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance by Stephen Herrero. I read the book to avoid being eaten by a grizzly, but all it did was give me nightmares that I was being devoured by one of the big beasts.

My buddy Ron still chuckles about the time I hauled a bear bell the size of a sledgehammer that rang like Big Ben when we hiked to the upper meadows of Slough Creek in Yellowstone National Park.

Every time I sleep in bear country, whether in a tent or cabin, my ears turn into radar dishes and the mouse in the wood pile is quickly transformed into a bear that can surely smell the steak on my breath.

So you can imagine my surprise when during a recent assignment, I ended up intentionally putting myself within a foot or two of a live bruin -- a mama bear with young cubs close by, to boot.

It all happened so fast. I was with Division of Wildlife Resources biologists as they located a black bear den with the help of a houndsman who had stumbled across the home of the mom and cubs while chasing a bobcat.

A quick shot from a tranquilizer dart gun and the big sow was down for the count. The cubs were pulled from the den to have their health checked and recorded.

The only problem was that the sow was larger and healthier than expected and not quite completely under the influence of the drug. As we all cooed over the cubs, she decided to depart the den. Partially drugged and groggy from her winter sleep, the sow took a step on an imaginary rock, did a somersault and started sliding down the steep snow field in front of the den.

In a millisecond, my brain played a picture of her picking up speed and rolling down the mountain until she plowed into a tree or a rock. Before I realized what I was doing, I jumped onto the snow field and was sliding on my feet backwards with my arms outstretched as if I was going to stop her slide.

Fortunately, she wasn't completely out of it and dug her long claws into the snow.

Shortly before she came to a stop, about 16 to 20 inches from my hands, we made eye contact and I felt like I could read her mind: "Just what do you think I'm going to do when you touch me?"

The sow skedaddled back up the snow field, leaving me mystified about the close encounter I somehow always knew I would have with a bear -- even if it wasn't exactly as I expected.

Brett Prettyman can be reached at brettp@sltrib.com