Bear Tale

Once people learn that I live in a remote cabin in Alaska, they
invariably ask if there are any bears in the area where I live and how
I can live in constant danger of bears intruding onto my property. This
is the story that always comes to mind for me as I give them a knowing
grin. It is the story of my first encounter with a giant Alaskan
grizzly bear, only instead of intruding onto my land, it was I who
stumbled onto the world of bears.

It was a sweltering hot July afternoon and I was on my second trip up
to our remote cabin site that day, backpacking supplies from the river
landing where I staged my gear for the two hour hike over the craggy,
ankle-twisting moose trail that led to the fifteen acres that I had
bought the week before. I was all business, thinking about little other
than placing one foot in front of the other without any regard for the
dense brush, sword ferns and prickling devil's club and briars that
sawed at my shins and knees as I pushed my way through them. The heat
and the frustration of the never ending trail had sucked out every
ounce of caution and I wanted only to reach camp and get out from under
the heavy frame pack and rest my feet for a while.

I had been packing supplies up to the cabin site for over a week and
while I had seen abundant bear signs and scat, I had yet to see a bear
and long since given up on the ridiculous practice of calling out,
whistling and talking as I walked to alert any phantoms that might be
lurking up around the next bend. As I hiked, I switched hands with the
Remington 870 shotgun with a pistol grip loaded with 3-inch magnum
slugs that I carried in a decorated sheath.

Like every other human being, I had certain preconceived ideas about
bears that involved stories of dragging away hapless campers kicking
and screaming from their sleeping bags to Goldilocks. Only, unlike
those who had the luxury of milling over the subject at thier leisure
in lands where the bears had been erradicated, I was hiking alone in a
region of Alaska that could easily be considered the very heart of bear
country, with exceptional concentrations of both smaller North American
black bears as well as the largest grizzly bears on the planet.

People in other areas and urban Alaskans believe there is a distinction
between Grizzly Bears, Alaskan Brown Bears and Kodiak Bears. In
reality, they are all the same species, Grizzly Bears, and these
distinctions are geographic, not biological. The grizzlies in the
Mat-Su valley, in which the Talkeetna River flows can, and do, match
and exceed the size of any bears found on Kodiak Island.

I was in an area where it would be statistically impossible to not
encounter a bear but my doubts about the number of bears and the
likelihood of encountering one had been steadily growing over the past
days into apathy. I truly believed that I was going to be able to enjoy
the luxury of being revered down river as an Alaskan outdoorsman
without having to experience the inconvenience of actually encountering
one of the unpleasant brutes.

I was operating on total instinct as I placed one foot in front of the
other, crawling on all fours at times to reach the top of the last hill
to the plateau that the land occupied. At the top a cool breeze greeted
my sweaty brow and it brought some momentary relief. I turned and
headed north on the trail without even a sideways glance south.

I barged belligerently along the trail, snapping outstretched limbs off
with my shoulders and reached the area called Ten Trees, which is what
I named the trailhead to the cabin site, which at that time was nothing
more than a dirt pit. I cut the corner through the brush and attacked
the trail. My shoulders and back were already experiencing the ecstacy
of dropping the pack beneath the tarps I had set up for a rain cover
over the make-shift kitchen. Checking above the tall grass, I was
rewarded by the beautiful sight of those bright blue tarps moving
gently in the breeze and I knew I was only moments away from a rest in
the shade.

I reached up and unfastened the quick release on the chest strap and
lifted one shoulder to begin getting the heavy pack off while I walked.
It was at that moment that I noticed something positively enormous move
beneath the tarps. Before I could distinguish its shape, I continued
walking for another two steps. My brain, raised on television and the
artificial reality of Western civilization first reacted by giving me
the idea that it was some kind of joke. I truly believed at first that
someone had come all the way out to my remote cabin site to play an
elaborate practical joke on me. However, the instant I placed my foot
down after the second step, I knew two things with more certainty than
I had ever known anything before in my entire life. I knew that what
was moving beneath the tarps was a bear and I knew it was far too big
to be a black bear.

Once the bear stepped out from beneath the tarps, it still had not
noticed me or heard me, and the cardinal rule about bear encounters
that people violated at their own dire peril was that bears do not like
surprises. I briefly considered taking a few steps away from it before
it noticed me, but the experts in their comfortable newspaper offices
advise to stand your ground. I got the decorative bag off the shotgun
as quickly and silently as I could. As I held it the shotgun whose heft
had lent such comfort to the trail before, receded in my hands to the
size of a child's toy water pistol. I held my finger on the pump action
button, but did not chamber a round to avoid startling the creature
with the shotgun's tell tale cha-ching that was supposed to scare off
all bad things. I had serious doubts about the 3-inch slugs being able
to stop the enormous creature then moving before me.

It moved like a dinosaur with slow, unhurried movement that was eerily
silent in the grass and brush. It was then that the bear lifted his
head and looked directly at me. His face was gigantic and his muzzle
was as big as a horse's nose. I had never seen a bear on TV in a bear
documentary that could match his size. I concentrated very hard, but no
TV glass would develop between us. Narrow together above his massive
snout were two dark sockets that hid his eyes like tea shades. It was a
naked, humbling experience to be examined by those eyes that I could
not see behind the tea shades. The eyes of an animal beholding a human
being that possessed not the slightest hint of fear, but was deciding
in the bear processes that went on within that great head if I
presented suitable food or if he would rather continue to mow the
huckleberries.

Then I saw in eyes I could not see something that was not a monster,
but a creature that was as curious about me as I was about him. For
what was perhaps a quarter of an inch, the bear lowered his head and
leaned towards me, I thought I recognized the motion a friendly dog
makes on its way to be petted on the head, but then the bear remembered
himself and stopped. Instead, he returned to looking into my eyes. I
saw in his face a wise old bear. An old man of the woods who had much
to teach me. He showed me that just like people, there are asshole
bears that need to be avoided, but that it was robbery to judge all of
one species by the actions of a few.

Then, with a sad look he turned away and moved slowly off into the
heavy brush. Leaving me to wonder at how quietly he moved for his great
size and positively speachless with awe as I dropped the heavy frame
pack beneath the tarps exactly where he had been when I first saw him.
While I could still see his massive backsides, I laid the shotgun down
on some boxes in the camp without concern. The boards I set up for a
kitchen stove had been knocked over inadvertantly, but nothing else of
my supplies or equipment had been touched. Even a pot of macaroni with
gravy I had forgotten was untouched.

I named the big bear "Gentle Ben" after the children's story. I keep
this story to myself and among special friends to keep hunters from
searching for him. I do not want to think of Ben on the floor of some
accountant's den in Seattle. My property is a part of his home range
and he passes through from time to time. I have never wished for Gentle
Ben to go away and although I ask for nothing from him, he does me the
service of keeping the black bears away, which are more likely to be a
nuisance and damage the cabin. The five to seven hundred pound bears
scamper like rodents whenever Ben is approaching. I find myself acting
like the unpopular kid in school in his presence, so desperate to be
liked that I usually make a buffoon of myself. For his part, Ben never
expresses any interest in anything going on at our homestead. It has
made me so honored and priveledged to be a part of his world that I am
tempted for the first time to believe in God again to explain the limit
of my imagination for the source of such a wonderful blessing on
me.