ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Bill Palas lives a step away from the Pisgah National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina. 

“Every morning, I go, ‘How in the world did I be so fortunate that I was able to buy this place and make this my home for many decades?’” Palas said. 

His weekly runs are an outlet for his body and mind. 

“I get a lot of my best thoughts and ideas when I'm on runs,” he said.

Palas thought his run on July 7 could have been his last, when he was arm’s deep in the mouth of a black bear. 

It felt like a normal day until he turned the corner on a path he’s been on many times before. He’s seen bears around the area on many occasions, but he never found himself stuck between a mother and a cub. 

“Everything happened so fast,” Palas said. “Or did the time stand still? I mean, it's hard to even evaluate that. But I remember when she got up and then, and then I saw, here's all these big white teeth, you know, a big giant mouth. What I really remember specifically was her claws when they ripped across my face, they were like a three-inch-long razor blades. I mean, they just cut.” 

Palas suffered injuries to his face, chest and arm.

“She charged up the hill and got up on her hind legs and stood up and she probably weighed over 300 pounds,” Palas said. “There's this big head, you know, right in my face that took her claw and raked it across my face and chest. That's when I went and took my left forearm and I went to hit her in the face to try to back her off.”

When he tried to hit the bear with his arm, the bear opened her mouth. 

“That's where my arm went into her mouth, and then that's when I pulled it out. That's what all these teeth marks were here,” Palas said.

As quickly as it started, it was over. The bear and her cub took off after knocking Palas to the ground. 

Palas left the area immediately and had to travel two miles back home alone. 

“I stopped to just survey what kind of shape I was in, and that's when I realized blood was just pouring everywhere,” Palas said.

When he returned home, his partner Marion Norwood took him to the emergency room. 

“A very odd voice said, 'Marion, are you here?' And I said, ‘I'm here,’” Norwood said. “He said, ‘I need you to come here now.’ So it was a very eerie and unusual feeling.”

Despite the frightening encounter, he remained upbeat.

“He was the best sport and like the funniest guy in the emergency room,” Norwood said. 

Bears aren’t uncommon in this area. So far this year, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has had 489 bear-related calls.

According to commission special projects biologist Ashley Hobbs, Buncombe County typically makes up about a third of bear calls every year.

Palas wants to spread a message of how important it is to follow guidelines on bear safety.

He believes his encounter was more on the rare end, but that there are still bear-related issues to be discussed in the community.

“I know we have a big bear problem with people feeding bears, and they think they're cute and stuff,” Palas said. “It should be important that people just need to realize they are wild animals, and we just need to respect them and, you know, pull your birdfeeder in and try to keep your trash under control.”

BearWise offers tips to live responsibly with black bears, including not approaching or feeding them, removing bird feeders and alerting neighbors to bear activity.