On

The Katmai Brown Bears don’t enter hibernation en masse, but typically do den over several weeks in late October, early November.  I get it: the days are shorter; the marsh grasses have pinked up; and the trees golden more each day; that extra blanket has a welcome weight. Mount Katolinat looks like a Bundt cake dusted with sugar: this prods bears and people to pig (like we needed any encouragement!) None of us seems to get enough, be that for distraction, from loneliness or hyperphagia.  Patterns are shifting: falls give way to river mouth, fish die and float down what they swam against; everyone seems a bit on edge.  We walk the beach one more time, then dig or board. Such a journey: a first or another year in this rough sweet place.   

Good night bear, good night.
Sleep the sleep that angels sleep.
Sleep, bear, sleep, sleep deep.

Parenting

Some of the best dads I have known have NOT been bears.  Bruins tend to be very paws-off, playing no role in the raising of cubs.  Certainly some human dads fall into this category, but none in my world, thankfully: the dads I know are very present. Still, it isn’t right for us to judge other species by human standards, no matter how much they may resemble us (the ears!  standing up on their hind legs!) or appear “cute.”  We have to assume that in the world of bears, low-involvement dads make sense even if we don’t understand it.  It seems common that we paint the mother bear as the great protector—that is borne out by many actions including 400 pound mothers somehow not rolling over and squashing their one-pound newborns, mothers standing up to much larger bears in defense of their cubs, and mothers sometimes taking in cubs they did not birth.  I contend that the great mother protectress image was sullied by its use in political speech some years ago, but such is what humans sometimes do.  Bears, I think, of either gender, are largely apolitical (if you can separate dominance from politics and vice versa.) So here, with a significant nod to bear dads,  I salute the moms, especially this one with the far away look in her eye. Just out of the frame are her three cubs, and she appears to be thinking: “Maybe I should have gone to college” (there I go anthropomorphizing! And look at those paws!)

Beyond the river
is always a better world
So we think in this.

How to Eat a Fish

Spot it.

Bite it. 

Move it away from the catch zone to avoid pirating.

Pin it.  

Go for the best parts: skin, head, caviar.

Leave remains for others.

Clean: no one likes the smell of fish in their paws.

Repeat. 

Repeat. 

Repeat. 

What tastes good is good.
No matter how you eat it,
Go do it again.

Everything I Know About Fishing I Learned from Bears (Episode 2)

Scoop with paws or skip that step: catch in mouth and go straight to eating. 

Stand up—that seems to work for the humans.

Snorkel—Head down, under water, ears out.  No one likes wet ears.

Dive--Full submersion, ears and all—you may have to shake all over to get the water out.

Pirate—let another bear do all the work, then steal the fish—especially fun with siblings.  This works best if you are the bigger one.  Eat on shore, in the bushes, to avoid the receiving end of pirating.

Dash and grab—spot ‘em, chase ‘em and paw pin ‘em to river bottom.

Beg--Bawling loudly as needed. Most likely to work only with your mother unless she decides to act like a May Pole and turn her back every time you try to get to her front where she is working through the catch.

To each their own:
Ursus, Lupus, Sapien
Pescatariats.

Thanks to the NPS for the names of most of these styles: www.nps.gov/katm/learn/photosmultimedia/brown-bear-frequently-asked-questions.htm#3

Photo of stand up bear and begging bear courtesy of Pete Graham

 

Most Days It Rains

Some days are all about water.  When it rains hard.  When, the next day, the road is a quarter mile river and the river is a road, three crossings the least memorable water of the day.  When the clouds lift to reveal the mountains dusted with September snow.  When the melting glacier cuts slate into the folds of a slicker. Throws off a rainbow. Makes a delta from a square foot of sand. When you shower off the day even as you drink it down.    

Bodies are water
And water needs the body
To sip and swallow.

 

  

Everything I Know About Fishing I Learned from Bears (Episode 1)

Go to the falls.  Sit right against the rock under the water up to your neck. Fish jump up and sometimes come back down; this knocks them for a loop and makes them easy to catch.  Sit in the “jacuzzi”: the water is still in the middle and fish go round and round your calm center.  Sit against the wall, wag your head as you would to watch tennis; pick out the one you want and bite it.  If you have earned respect, through bulk or disposition, go sit on top of the fall, catch them as they fly, or just open up and let them come to you. 

If you lean enough
Into or against the flood
the river provides.

Prodigal Fish

Inside the rock redd their mothers dug with fraying fins, the eggs grow eyes then carry yolk sacs like oxygen tanks.  As fry they graduate to lake, then, the one to ten in a mother’s 1500 whisk out to sea.  In the salt water, they vacuum up copepods, krill, radiolarian, fattened on the energy of chlorophyl processed sunshine. In a year or so, millions suddenly turn away from food and swim against the current, through the nets and back up the river.  They give their young up from their bodies and then give their bodies up to their young, to the bears, to the birds, even to the trees which grow noticeably taller along the banks. 

In a nest of rock
1500 orbs of hope
That one will come back.

Thanks to Ranger Jherek who describes salmon as “pure sunshine.”

Spawn

The bears at Brooks Falls are looking with such intensity at something that may have a hump like they do.  Something that may change color from spring to fall, like some of them do.  Something that has a strong sense of smell, like they do, strong enough to sniff out where they were born even after several years and many miles of travel.  Something that will help the bear stay alive for 6 months without eating, expelling waste or breathing more than once a minute, even the ones who give birth to one to three new bears.  They love the falls geology because it feeds them.  Similarly, we love the planes and boats and friends who haul food to this remote park. 

You love me why bears

Love the river; we bring food
Across the ocean.

To see salmon trying to jump the falls, visit https://blog.explore.org/keep-jumping-salmon-you-can-do-it/

Back to the Bears

On the day the Rockies play the Cubs in Denver, cubs, sows and bores are playing the falls at Brooks. Halfway between lakes, a basalt dam pushed up by quake and eroded by ice, spills water six feet.  As though swimming upstream on hunger were not enough, fins become wings the fish ride to get back to the nest that spawned them. Stunned by the churn, do those falling short curse geology?

By waxing crescent
The bear genuflect and chant
In praise of glacier.

(Thanks to Naturalist Michael Fitz for information used in this entry and Ranger Jherek for the idea that the bears can thank geology for the great fishing fall.)

10,000 Steam Vents

Editorial: When I learned of the possibility of visiting the Alaska Peninsula, I researched.  I quickly ran across “volcanoes” and “bears” and immediately thought of two books that I must bring with me: Rising Fire by John Calderazzo and Great Colorado Bear Stories by Laura Pritchett.  I was right.  Having read both before, I am sampling them now, finding parts most appropriate to my visit to this place, created by the largest volcano in the 20^th century and now populated by over 2,000 “brown bears”—a subspecies (horribilis) of Ursus arctos (grizzlies). 

***************

Novarupta, on the Pacific Ring of fire, pulled magma from Mt. Katmai, 6 miles away, like sucking milkshake through a straw.  Spread ash Glen Canyon Dam deep. Changed temperatures for 2 years.   Stopped salmon.  Starved bears.  Displaced people, killed none.

The earth coughs fire
Pyroclastic air fall tuff
Ashes out the sun.

Bluemoon Bear Break

It is easy to miss moonrise indoors—roofs and walls between the sky and eye where screens steal looking up and out.  It is easy to miss moonrise in the city with streetlight and disco ball.  It is easy to miss moonrise when the sun stays out so near new day. But now an earlier curtain and even bears look up from the next catch when second moon turns Katmai blue. 

As the season breaks
Bridge and bank and Bristol Bay
Bleed in cobalt blue

Sign

Crap, shit, poop, or the more scientific: scat.  It can tell us much if we listen. Is it big? Bear.  Solid, well formed, a bit like horse apples: bear eating lots of grass. Grey like extruded concrete: river clay to soothe the stomach and absorb toxins. A splat of cobbler expelled like ammunition from a gatling gun: bear eating blue or crow berries (purple) or lowbush cranberries (red roe). Do they eat these just for fun and flavor because they sure don’t digest them.  Count on this, though, despite no visible fins or iridescent scales, the common ingredient is sockeye.  Steaming?  It probably is walking ahead, and away, from you, but look around and be ready to yield.

Early autumn graze
Salmon, berries, grass and clay 
Omnivores delight

Mother Earth

Born in February of 2023, people call me a “Springer” ‘cuz this was my first spring. My older cousins, the yearlings, are one year old—they have passed their first full year and two springs.  People call two-to-three-year-olds “subadults.”  Once we leave our mom in our second or third year we are mostly grown up but still get bigger.    Mom gives birth to one or more of us in January or February.  The den she digs for us is like a second womb, we are so small.  We have lots of growing to do, from 1# blind nuggets at birth to maybe 900#s at maturity.

In this earthen womb
Burrowed in dense mother pelt
Eyes open to pitch.

                                                Subadults

Wait, Walk or Get Out of the Way

Swept from float plane straight to bear school, they learn not to run.  As though to children at the pool, the ersatz parents shout “walk, walk.” But what to do while not running?  Holding still is sometimes good. If she starts your way, “walk” may cry out in your pounding head. And if the mantra gets to your boots--notwithstanding tripper logs, rocks and roots--walking is best done backwards to keep her in sight. But when it becomes clear that she is not stepping off the trail--they never do--it is prudent to yield.  This might mean a twisted ankle or, if you walk, just a little lettuce in the laces. 

Blind corner surprise
Making all the difference
The untrampled woods.

Nap Causes Bear Jam

Natural History Note: People may manage this land, but the bears own it. And they have the right-of-way even when napping. When a bear impedes the progress of people the rangers refer to it as a “bear jam.”

After a meandering graze through a salad of tall marsh grass, she sits by the water, rests her head.  Eyes closed until a conspiracy of wind and blade brush her nose.  She bites the green ticklers without a change of posture and chews back to dreams.

Linger on the bridge
to avoid the fate of grass
mown down in slumber.

 

Form Editorial: The prose in a Haibun traditionally is objective: personal pronouns are eschewed.  Here I strove for that and reduced the passage from 178 words to less than 50.  It took me the good part of an hour to get there: word jam? 

Sleepy Bear

 

A little editorializing today before getting to the Haibun du jour.  What is a “Haibun” anyway?  As many of you know, it is a Japanese poetry form combining a brief (ideally 60-80 word) dense prose piece with a Haiku.  It is often related to travel and is one way to approach a travel journal.  That is what I am doing here on my blog while visiting the Alaska Peninsula for several weeks. 

Here is a revised version of yesterday’s Haiku:  I think that the shift in speaker (from me to the bear) was confusing.

Do not run, do not.
Though your feet are a foot more
You lumber, not run.

Sleepy bear

Just when I was thinking the bears never do anything but eat, I am seeing more bear napping.  Why?  Could be I am just noticing more details now that the shine has faded a bit on the wonder of seeing so many bears so close. Or maybe the bears are working up to the hibernation they know is only about a month away, cued by diminishing daylight (sunset 9:30 now vs 11:30) and lower temperatures —highs in the 50’s instead of 60’s?  Are the bellies nearing the salmon saturation tipping point?

Trees and bears all know
Summer is twisting the panes,
Ready to shutter.

So Big

Are we really so big in the world? My inflated human ego has felt most humbled at the top of Longs Peak, looking across the chasm at Mosi-0s-Tunya, “Smoke that Thunders,” every time the Pleiades shoots at me, and most recently when I planted my booted foot next to the print of a bear at the Naknek Lake shore. And when the ursine owner sauntered my way up the beach, the Bear School 101 mantra was my heartbeat.

Do not run, do not
though my feet are a foot more
I lumber, not run.