It’s a Bear’s World in Kodiak, Alaska

By TED O’CALLAHAN
NYT

SHE gave a chuff and pulled up short, as surprised to see us as we were to see her. Her dense, fluffy fur was blond. I watched her square, expressive face very closely because this bear — maybe 300 pounds and 10 yards away — would be the one deciding how the encounter played out. An adrenaline-driven voice in my head said, “This could go badly.” But it was also telling me how incredibly thrilling it was to be so near this animal. Not being on top of the food chain certainly heightens one’s awareness.

We were four people and a dog tucked against a slope, partly hidden by waist-high grass. The bear looked and sniffed for almost a minute, trying to decide what she had come across. Then she pivoted onto a trail and moved away, choosing flight over fight. I was grateful for that; an older male might have stood his ground.

It was the second day of a bear-watching trip on Kodiak Island in Alaska, the largest landmass of the nearly 5,000-square-mile Kodiak Archipelago south of the mainland, and the exclusive home of the Kodiak bear. Our guides, Harry and Brigid Dodge, didn’t seem overly concerned about the close call; it was a young female bear, they explained later, maybe 3 or 4 years old, curious and scared, but with easy escape paths and no food cache to protect. “If it had been a bigger male we would have been backing away,” Brigid said. “We wouldn’t have let him get that close.”

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