It was the pumpkin-pie breath breath that woke me up.

Our tiny mountain house has a very tiny bedroom, much tinier than the tiny living room, and the two share a wall furnace. That means the bedroom is at least 20 degrees warmer than the rest of the house, including the parts where the plumbing are, so we sleep with a window open an inch or two. In winter in the high country, that's enough.

But we have a king bed, and in the tiny bedroom, in order to avoid placing it up against the wall furnace, which really doesn't seem like a very good idea, we've smooshed it up against the opposite wall, which means that my nose is about 4 inches from the open window at, improbably, the exact same height as the opening.

So, yeah, sometimes my nose gets a little frosty. Life is rough. Well, no, it's not. We have a house in the most beautiful mountains in the world. Sunday, in the afternoon sunshine, I sat on my porch carving pumpkins  and watching chickadees and Steller's jays on my feeder, so close I could have reached out and sliced off a feather with my pumpkin-carving knife. Instead, I sprinkled cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg on the underside of the pumpkin lids, a trick my mother taught me many years ago. 

After the trick-or-treaters had gone, rather than caroming between elk all the way down a very dark road, we set the alarm for 5 and tucked ourselves into our very cozy mountain bed, under our down comforter in our cool room. Oh, yeah, life is rough.

It wasn't noises that woke me up. In the mountains, we have noises all the time. We can hear elk bugling, antlers clashing, coyotes singing, firs creaking. A child's voice will still rouse me instantly, years after my baby left for college, but animals, no. We laugh at people who express fear of raccoons, coyotes, bobcats. We don't try to pet them, but we don't go out of our way to avoid them, and they don't bother to avoid us either.

We are diligent in our bearproofing, not because we don't like bears but because bears that get too close to humans are shot. We bring our birdfeeders and dog dishes in at night, and we don't leave food in the car. Our bearproof trash can sports tooth marks an inch deep.

We know people who've had personal encounters with elk and moose, too. Like bears, they're big animals. So I glance both ways when I step out of the house or the church at night, but I don't think much about it.

And we don't worry about human predators. Sure, they're out there. I lock the door at night, although never during the day. 

So when the pumpkin-pie breath woke me out of a sound sleep, my first thought was not "omigosh!" but "dessert." 

And then I realized I could hear heavy breathing.

I slowly opened one eye. This is a technique nearly everyone learns in childhood: If the monster doesn't know you're awake, you're safe.

On the sill, I could see the dimmest outline of a paw.

The other eye flew open, and I discovered, at the other end of the windowsill, a matching paw 

with long shiny claws.

And in between, a bear snout

with long teeth

and pumpkin-pie breath

six inches from my nose.

We had forgotten to put the jack-o-lanterns in the bearproof trash receptacle. 

 A window screen is no match for a bear. It's no match for a small child. For that matter, neither is a glass window, and slamming the windowframe down on those paws didn't seem like the best plan.

When I first accepted that pulpit, a member of my congregation had given me a zipper bag of firecrackers and matches, to be used in scaring off a bear. At the time, opening the door to toss out firecrackers hadn't seemed like a good way to deter a bear who was close enough to scare me. 

"Go away," I whispered to the bear.

He grunted, which is not the same as going away. 

"What do you want?" I whispered, as if that weren't obvious. Winter has come. The berries are gone. My bird feeder was inside and my trashcan was bearproofed. I hoped my own breath smelled of toothpaste, but there could have been undertones of porkchop.

Very, very stealthily, I elbowed my husband in the gut. He made a bear-like noise and then muttered, "Wha?"

"Bear," I whispered, as quietly as I could, and the bear made a very authentic bear noise.

"Air?" my husband muttered, which I interpreted to mean "Where?" He lifted his head and found his snout perhaps a foot and a half from the bear's. We all froze.

We weren't in immediate danger. The gap between frame and sill wasn't big enough for him to reach through, or even to open his mouth. He could knock it all loose easily enough — we've seen cars and pickups that bears have peeled open — but he wasn't trying to get in. He wasn't roaring, growling or doing that huffing thing bears do, just grunting. Based on the height of the sill, I knew he didn't have much leverage to climb in; he'd have had to scramble. He was probably full of pumpkin. 

The plan was fairly obvious. When we were both standing free rather than cocooned like burritos, we'd do ... something. We didn't want to irritate him while I was still tangled up in bedding right in front of his nose. 

My spouse lifted the bedclothes and rolled away, and clearly, I was supposed to follow — except, how often do people get to be nose to nose with a bear? I reached out and touched my forefinger to one big claw

right before my husband yanked me backward,

right before he said,

"Are you effing crazy?"

and right before the bear, startled, peeled our window frame right out of the wall in his haste to get away.

I'm probably effing crazy, but I lived to tell the tale. And life is actually pretty good.