Our family (and four others) went camping out in Shenandoah National Park last weekend. We saw lots of wildlife--right in front of our tents. That was cool.

The deer explosion out there is crazy. We saw dozens of deer. There were so many deer that it was almost like that scene where Snow White catches a butterfly on her hand and all the animals come up to her. Basically, if you took more than a second to look around, there were deer.

We also saw lots of skunks at night. The skunks I remember from the midwest were big suckers, about the same size as raccoons. I could be wrong about that, though, because all of these skunks (and there were quite a few) were not very large at all. They weren't spooked by people, which is good, because when walking around at night there was a good chance one might stumble over one. No one got sprayed. All was well.

There were plenty of other creatures, but the highlights came just as we were packing up. A small black bear ambled by our campsites. It was maybe thirty feet away. We all watched respectfully while the bear moseyed along. At one point, it turned its head toward us and stared back. And then it kept going on its way.

Now that I think of it, the only time we didn't see any deer was when the bear wandered by.

Even more spectacular, to my way of thinking, was the rattlesnake that crossed the road one campsite up from us. It was four or five feet long and had a nice chipmunk-sized bulge in its belly. This snake wanted to find a nice place to sleep, and it had no intention of bothering anyone. Of course, when thirty people crowded around to ooh and aah, it coiled up and rattled. Just for a moment.

We saw a couple more bears from the car on the drive out of the park, and at the time I thought that those three were the first bears I had seen in the wild. I now have a vague memory of my family driving through a run-down wild animal park in Georgia. I might have seen a bear there. I don't know. I can say that this was the first time I stood on the ground and had an unobstructed (and unprotected) up-close look at a bear. And while I heard rattlers many times while living in eastern New Mexico, this was the first time I'd actually seen one on the ground.

A couple weeks ago, I saw my first wild turkey while on a hike near the Potomac. That and last weekend's haul crosses three animals off my list. Whales (in the ocean) are still on that list. I would like to see a black widow somewhere other than a zoo. I would like to see elk and moose out on the range. And I would like to see otters, though river otters are nocturnal and very hard to view. I would like to have a confirmed sighting of a wolf (though I saw something a couple years ago that was probably a big coyote). I wouldn't mind going on a safari and seeing some big cats and giraffes and elephants and such, but I like it much better when the sighting is somewhat more serendipitous.

Why are these things important? Why do I (and many others) put so much stock in seeing animals in their native habitat? I've been pondering this, and I don't have an answer. Turns out that this column isn't about solving problems. It's merely about wonder. So I'll leave that question hanging.

Jon Worley isn't exactly a nature lover, but he's no hater, either.