Recently I listened to an episode on "In Good Faith" which is a show on BYU Radio. It's a story about a grizzly bear attack in Grand Teton National Park. The story is told by Michael Dunn who is the Managing Director of BYU Broadcasting and he's also an Area Seventy for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The attack happened in 1994 when Elder Dunn was vacationing with his family in Grand Teton National Park when he was 36 years old. Michael had grown up with a single mom in Salt Lake City as a member of the Episcopal Church. Despite being in Salt Lake City, he was completely oblivious to the Church of Jesus Christ and didn't become familiar with it until he was a teenager and started going to public school because he wanted to do more sports and have more girls to date. He became friends with some kids who were members of the church and noticed the atmosphere in their homes was different than he had experienced before. He started learning about it so he could prove to his friends that they were wrong about their religion but he ended up getting baptized when he was 18 years old, then served a mission the next year.
Michael Dunn is a big-time runner and has run over 30 marathons. While his family was vacationing in Grand Teton Park, he went on a couple of runs in the early morning. One morning, the day before the bear attack, he went out and as he ran through a meadow, the sun was rising, the clouds in the sky from an earlier rain and the mountains and lake in the background caused him to drop to his knees in a prayer of gratitude. He prayed out loud which was not something he usually did. He thinks that this experience helped prepare him for what happened the next day.
The next day, he got up early to go running. He felt a sense of unease but didn't know why. In hindsight, he should have heeded the impression and stayed home that day. He grabbed his sunglasses as he left but then second-guessed that decision since he wanted to travel as light as possible. He put the glasses down on a picnic table but then had a strong impression he should take them so he picked them up again.
As he ran, he saw the largest bear print he had ever seen along with a mound of twin berries that had been stripped of their skin. That concerned him so he started singing out loud. After a while, as it grew lighter, he was more comfortable and ran in silence. Suddenly a full-grown bear with a grizzly hump came running from his left and knocked him off the trail about 9 feet. He thought this was the end for him. He tried to fight this grizzly bear who was unbelievably strong and not having much success when he decided to pray. He prayed out loud as he had the day before, "Heavenly Father, there is a bear on my back. I'm going to die and I need your help." Immediately, he had the impression, "Play dead." So despite the adrenaline racing through his body, he forced himself to relax and the more he relaxed, the more the bear started backing off. Finally, the bear left him and took off.
Unfortunately he was in really bad shape and was bleeding everywhere. He put some tourniquets on himself using the remnants of his shirt and stuffed the rest of the shirt pieces into the worst wound on his leg to try to stop the bleeding. The doctors who treated him said he looked like he had been in a motorcycle accident on a motorcycle going 100mph. They couldn't tell where the bleeding stopped or started but they were amazed the bear didn't cut any major arteries. Obviously he survived despite being about 6 miles into the backcountry. There "happened" to be some wilderness photographers in the area who helped him and he was able to be evacuated by helicopter. He's convinced there are no coincidences in life but calls them miracles.
About ten days after the attack, a park ranger called him and said, "Good news! We found your sunglasses." He couldn't figure out why that was good news but when he saw the sunglasses eventually, he realized why he had needed them. In the exact middle of one of the lenses, there was something that looked like a bullet hole. But it wasn't a bullet hole, it was a bear claw. The bear had tried to attack his eye but the sunglasses had saved it. If he hadn't been wearing them, he would have lost his vision and probably his life since being blinded would have been catastrophic. He calls it "the miracle of the sunglasses." He's convinced that God speaks to us much more often than we realize, usually so we can help other people.
He says that he has kept the sunglasses in a drawer in his desk and on bad days, he pulls them out to remind himself that maybe things aren't so bad after all.
Here's a link for the episode if you want to listen: https://www.byuradio.org/34f87ac2-b603-4049-ad44-f9b50459f1a4/in-good-faith-ep-85.-michael-dunn,-surviving-a-grizzly-bear-attack
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