“THE BEAR”

Suddenly, there was a bear.

I sensed something, turned around, and it was there. Just like that. Brown, and very large, it
had appeared without a sound about thirty yards from me. Thirty yards is not far. It’s the
distance between home plate and first base on a baseball diamond. Which is way too close.

Bears have an uncanny ability to do that. It had appeared just like that.

And it was now, very visibly, trying to make up its mind whether to walk toward me, or away.

BEAR STORY

First of all, I have to tell you that bear encounters are not at all abnormal up here. Not one bit;
quite the contrary, in fact. Like all communities in Alaska - - except perhaps for Anchorage,
though even there bears frequently wander into the city and moose and deer roam the streets
in the suburbs - - Juneau is completely surrounded by wilderness. Which means that if your
house happens to be on the literal edge of town, wildness (not just wilderness) begins right
where the wall of your house ends - - i.e., wild things live right there. It also means that any
roads that happen to lead out of town go only a few miles before simply coming to an end.
Abruptly. Just a sign, if you’re lucky, saying end of road. And in the woods on each side of the
road, again, only wildness.

It takes some getting used to. The abruptness of the change; the immediate shift from safe to
not safe. It happens almost in the crossing of a line. One second you’re in your “back yard”,
but a few steps later - - the trees growing so close together you lose any line of sight - - you’re
in primordial woods, completely on your own.

The point is, you don’t have to go very far in any direction to find wildness. Or bears.

Now...hop in a float plane and fly over unbroken wilderness to an inlet on another island thirty
miles away, and you really get the full experience. The plane strikes the water with an audible
thump, motors over to the shallows, the pilot kills the engine, you open the door, step down
onto the plane’s float and then off it into the water, you haul your gear onto the bank, then the
plane motors away, lifting off the water, and you watch it for a moment, listening for a moment
longer as the sound of its engine fades away. Then suddenly, everything is totally, totally
soundless, and you’re there. In it. An encompassing surround of wildness. And there’s
nothing, literally nothing, of assistance to you.

So…that’s the backdrop. I’ve taken pains to sketch it because, though I’ve had a lot of run-ins
with bears, giving you a sense of the setting may help convey just how exposed I was - - even
for here - - when I had the particular encounter I’m about to tell you about. In the same way,
hopefully it’ll give you an idea of just how incredibly lucky I was to come away with my life.

I was on a fishing trip with my friend, Selim, in late April 1995. Selim and I were friends and
fishing partners for ten years, before he had to return to Bangladesh because of political
problems involving his father, a diplomat. We were very close. He was educated at Sandhurst,
very proper, very smart, very enthusiastic, and especially loved two things in life - - flyfishing
and politics. We bonded instantly upon encountering each other in the middle of nowhere on a
creek one day, miles from the highway, and after that hung out daily, fishing together every
possible chance we could, year round (flyfishing in snow, Margie…you have no idea…), twice
getting in more than a hundred days of fishing in a single year. We were so alike, so
compatible, people used to say we moved like schooling fish. I miss him more than I can say.

Anyway…

Selim had created a one-man high end guide business for himself, flying groups of 2-3
individuals at a time on 1-day flyfishing trips out to the islands. (The Alexander Archipelago,
which includes Douglas Island where our house is, comprises some 1,100 islands, virtually all of
them uninhabited.) His clients were almost exclusively diplomatic corps people who come to
Juneau with their families on the cruise ships that stop here, often overnighting or even
remaining in port for a day or two. Turns out that diplomats love to flyfish. Who knew? (Selim
did: it’s a professional pastime when you’re posted in foreign countries, and naturally
everybody who flyfishes dreams of flyfishing Alaska.) Selim’s pitch, consequently, was that
while their families shopped and explored Juneau, the men (occasionally, women) could fly out
to sample a remote area, get a taste of flyfishing Valhalla, experience the magic, and then later
come back for a longer crack at it..

So, on top of our personal time together fishing, I’d also often fly out with Selim to help on
these 1-day charters. It was great; I’d get a free trip out of it, and it would be a help to him. On
these occasions, he’d take care of the clients once we landed, getting them rigged and starting
to fish, while I ranged up or downstream or hiked over to adjoining watersheds to scout out
locations, returning to let Selim know, so he could keep his clients on fish. In the process, I got
to map the areas and get familiar with them, as well as fish a lot of really pristine spots, places
where fish had literally never seen a fly. It was perfect.

And thus it was on the fateful day in question. We’d flown to a place called Hawk Inlet on the
west coast of Admiralty Island, to fish a small stream there called Green’s Creek. It’s a spot
about thirty air miles west of Juneau. Admiralty Island is about ninety miles long, and if you
don’t already know (did I mention it before?) has the highest density of brown bears in North
America. Its Tlingit name is “Xootsnoowú”, which translates as “Fortress Of The Bears”.
Moreover, the brown bears on Admiralty are coastal brown bears, the largest of the grizzly
species. There are a lot of them there - - over 1,600 on the island as of a few years ago - - and
they’re all big.

Anyway, there we were on Green’s Creek, just a little ways upstream from saltwater, maybe a
hundred yards. Selim had two clients, friends of his father’s from Washington, D.C., it was the
last week of April, and we were looking for steelhead. We’d been there about half an hour and
nothing was showing, so I told Selim I’d hike back down to salt water to see if any fish were
milling around near the mouth. The tide was coming in, so there was a pretty good chance
there were. (Like salmon, steelhead returning from the ocean to fresh water will often mill
around the mouth of a stream, waiting for a freshet of rain or an incoming tide to lift them and
carry them in.)

It was only a short walk down to the mouth, and we’d been down there just a little while
earlier, so I didn’t take my rifle. Big mistake.

There’s a narrow spit at the mouth of Green’s Creek, about forty or fifty feet long, that goes
straight out into salt water. It’s basically the grassy top of a sandbar, and when the tide’s
coming in gets pretty narrow, maybe 6-8’ wide. It provides a good look into the water at the
mouth, though, so I walked out to the very end to see what I could spot.

So there I was, leaning out and peering into the water, trying to see fish. Mind you, it’s a sunny
morning, around ten, it’s warm and sunny, and it’s absolutely silent. Not even the scree of a
sea gull. Just a little lapping sound as the tide crept bit by bit up the sides of the spit.

Then, sharply - - a sound directly behind me

I turn around, and there, from out of the bushes at the base of the spit, at a distance of maybe
halfway to first base on a Little League baseball field, stands a very large brown bear, looking at
me. Completely blocking my exit.

And I mean completely.

I now have water on three sides, so literally, nowhere to go. And besides, the bear could easily
outswim me anyway: I have waders on. Why, why, did I not take that gun. No time for that,
though. Focus. Pay attention.

You do what the experts tell you to do. Raise both arms, hold your rod over your head, look big.
Talk to the bear. Make sure it knows what you are, or aren’t, though at this point it doesn’t
seem to make a difference. But you go ahead and do it. Because, well, because that’s all
you’ve got. So you get tall. Real tall. And you talk as firmly and clearly to the bear as you can;
not a quiver or quaver or whatever anything like that at all in your voice.

But the bear just looks at you. As if, hearing and seeing nothing special at all going on, it’s
simply deciding - - and taking its time about it - - whether even to bother with you. And you
take that as a good sign, so you keep on keeping on.
Until it turns, and starts walking towards you. Slowly, yes. But, no mistaking, also deliberately.
Determinedly. Plodding casually but steadily towards you. You can’t believe it. You just can’t
believe it. It’s coming. You’re food.