The BEARS

The BEARS Katmai National Park and Preserve, AK

Katmai National Park and Preserve, AK

We wake atop of Dumpling Mountain after a restful night’s sleep – so restful that we’ve missed breakfast at the dining hall, which ended at 8:30! We briefly debate whether or not our friends will worry if we don’t immediately head for the campground; but opt to sleep in for another ½ hour. We finally rally, then hike down (“Hey Bear”, “Ho Bear”) to the dining hall for coffee and decide to kill the hour until lunch starts by reading something from the Brooks Lodge. Here we each find copies of “Rods and Wings“, by Ben [get name from internet?] – an Alaskan history, and more specifically, the history of Alaska’s sport fishing lodges, particularly those like Brooks Lodge, that are only accessible by plane. In particular, this is the story of Ray Petersen – a young boy from Chicago, who fell in love with flying and fishing, and Alaska (in that order) – and set about to share that love with others by establishing lodges on some of the best fishing streams that Alaska had to offer. Our wait for lunch passes quickly as we each sit reading our own copy, taking turns sharing sections aloud with each other.

The rest of today, and the next, we devote to the bears – we alternate between Brooks Falls and further downstream at the river’s mouth, where it enters Brooks Lake. The Falls, as I noted before, is primarily a hangout for the older, larger males – which stake out territory atop, on, and below, the falls. Here, younger, solo bears occasionally approach, but are quickly put in their place to take what the bigger males don’t. By contrast, downstream at the river’s mouth, we watch younger, solo bears and sows with this spring’s cubs emerge from and disappear within the densely vegetated river banks and islands, often “snorkeling” for fish in the swift current, with only their tufted ears visible. One red salmon equals about 4,500 calories – on a good day, a bear can eat over 90 fish, which using lose math, means ca. 100,000 calories per day. If you’re going to sleep for eight months without feeding, you need to carry a lot of reserves into the den. Some of these large boars will have bellies dragging the ground when they leave Brooks River – the shortest river in North America.

Back at the river’s mouth, one very blond sow in particular, dubbed “Holly” by the NPS rangers (a.k.a. bear #436), swims regularly with her small, charcoal-colored spring cub – taking him far out from shore within the body of Brooks Lake as she snorkels for fish. It is amazing how successful she is at catching fish in that open water – her head emerging with a salmon clutched in her jaws. Her cub is an equally amazing swimmer – paddling in Holly’s wake for ½ hour stretches at a time, occasionally resting by climbing onto her back while she does the heavy strokes to keep them afloat.

Writing about Holly and her cub reminds me of some interesting remarks made by other Park visitors during our stay. As we watched Holly and her cub, one woman repeatedly vocalized her worry for the young bear, at times saying “I can’t watch” and covering her eyes as she expressed aloud the desire for someone to rescue the bear and bring him to safety on the shore. So unfortunate, I thought, that this woman couldn’t appreciate that by teaching her cub to swim early, Holly was very likely giving her cub the best chance at survival – building his young muscles, teaching him to fish, AND by teaching him to swim, providing him with another escape route from male grizzlies that may view the young bear as competition, or prey. In another instance, a young yearling cub (meaning born last spring) that had been abandoned by his mother (who apparently has a pattern of this) was frequently seen loping down trails in and around the Lodge, and along the shoreline. This poor cub, affectionately dubbed the “cub-adult” (a play on words for “sub-adult”) by Park Rangers and bear technicians, has a noticeably slow gait, and is thin for his age, with a shaggy, disheveled coat of light-brown fur. Even I admit he appears lonely as he lopes about. But finally, after numerous near-encounters (which sent the Park Rangers and bear technicians running to ensure that people kept their distance), word made it around that the cub-adult had caught a fish – an encouraging sign that despite being prematurely separated from his mother, he might just have the survival instincts and skills required to make it on his own. This gave us hope, Carolyn and me, for the bear’s survival. But one park visitor was heard begging a Park Ranger “Oh, can’t you please just catch him, feed him, and take him to a zoo?”. The Ranger spent a little time with this visitor trying to explain the need to let nature take its course, no matter the outcome, and how cruel it may seem to us.

This is truly a special place on the planet. Whether or not you ever make it here, I hope you can share in that sense of gratitude that places like this exist.