On my girlfriend’s first trip to Admiralty Island, we were picking salmon berries when we heard a bear moving through the nearby maze of thorns. I spoke to it gently. The brush crackled and then a tense silence ensued. I apologized for our intrusion and we backed away.
Mary Catharine’s family, with deep roots in Virginia, weren’t excited to hear about our trip. They already thought I was a little off. Taking her to hike, kayak and sleep on the island said to have the densest concentration of brown bears in the world didn’t win me any points.
MC was having a good time — she didn’t even mind I forgot the cook stove and toilet paper. In Swan Cove, a large solitary male killer whale with a hooked fin had approached us. It rose and sank in place, 40 yards from the shore, studying us. We watched a sow with two cubs floating and splashing around in the ocean to cool off. A little later, we made a sweaty hike up a mountain to the edge of the alpine. Along the way, we surprised a small bear that quickly ran away. A pair of merlins — a kind of small falcon — watched us as we rested in the shade and swatted at biting flies. That evening we saw two different bears cruising the beach as we kayaked toward camp. An adult boar walked down to the water’s edge not far from where we floated. He lowered his head, flexed his forearms and shoulders and exhaled loudly.
Now, as we walked away from the bear in the salmonberry patch toward an estuary, I wondered if it was the same boar. The night before, we’d seen him a few hundred yards from where we’d been picking berries. Nameless mountains rose into blue sky and the sun, at least for Southeast, beat down mercilessly. Pink salmon jumped in the shallows along the edge of the beach. A few chum mixed in with the schools. The estuary was crisscrossed with bear trails, beds and salmon carcasses. Most of the bears were napping in dense cover or fishing in the shady ripples for spawning salmon deeper in the rainforest. Eagles and ravens were waiting for it to cool off before feasting on the leftovers. The only stirring, besides the salmon constantly splashing, was a flock of noisy Bonaparte seagulls at the mouth of the stream.
We sat on a log hoping to see a bear prowling in the shadows where the stream disappeared into the woods. MC read a book and I listened and watched as the sun fell lower on the horizon. In a few hours, when it turned to dusk, bears would emerge to cruise and fish the estuary. One or two would likely smell the log we’d been sitting on and would become nervous and agitated. Slowly, we ambled back, stopping to watch the multitudes of salmon leaping out of the ocean along the way. When we approached our kayak, I yelled “Hey bear!”
Next to the boat was a silvery salmon with a single large bite taken out of it. I stood above listening and studying the thick wall of jungle. I spoke again. A branch snapped nearby and then there was silence. The tension was almost audible.
“Let’s get out of here,” MC said. (She later admitted to being nervous, which is saying something, as I once watched her play chicken on a bicycle with a dump truck in Southeast Asia. Afterwards, I was a little jittery but she was steely, like a female cyclist version of Dirty Harry.)
“What are you all worked up about?” she asked after the Southeast Asia incident.
“You almost got run over by a dump truck.”
“But I didn’t,” she said and rode on leaving me feeling like a bit of a drama queen.
Back on Admiralty Island, I haulted the boat to wtaer and said to the bear, “We’re sorry. We’re leaving now.”
Sometimes I wonder what the bear meant by leaving its fish there. Where and how did it catch such a silver salmon? All the fish we’d seen in streams had spawning coloration and the nearest salmon stream was over a quarter mile away. Perhaps it hadn’t meant to leave it. Maybe the bear had been scared by the kayak and our stink, and dropped the fish before hiding in the woods. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe the bear wanted us to see the radius of its bite mark. Maybe it was a gift for leaving the berry patch.
MC and I paddled across flat ocean toward camp. A large bear emerged at the mouth of a nearby salmon stream for a few moments. Sensing us, it quickly disappeared back into the woods.
• Bjorn Dihle is a Juneau writer. He can be reached at bjorndihle@yahoo.com.
The brown bear near the salmonberry patch.
