Beyond the Bear Read Online Free PDF

drifting off to sleep.
    My buddy, John Duray, broke the spell when he showed up around 10:30 that morning. He knocked on the front door, and when no one answered, he let himself in. He shouted down the hallway. “Hey, Dan! You awake in there? Let’s not keep those reds waiting!”
    I awoke with a start. “Ah, yeah. Be right out.”
    When I wasn’t, John walked down the road to the Aloha Alaska deli and returned a little later with my ritual morning elixir, a sixteen-ounce cup of Americano.
    “Yo, Dan! Time to rally. I’ve got you some coffee out here.”
    A little embarrassed and more than a little groggy, Amber and I rolled out of bed and stumbled out to the kitchen. I didn’t want to leave her, but like I’ve already admitted, fishing was my weakness. I liked to say that if I lost both arms, I’d figure out a way to fish. I considered inviting her along. But we’d had such an intense night I figured we could each use some space to let it percolate. So I didn’t. I hugged and kissed her goodbye.
    “I’ll give you a call when I get back from fishing to see what you’re up to,” I told her.
    It was a promise I would be unable to keep.
    FAMILY PHOTO
    At Chilkoot Lake, 2001.

CHAPTER 2
    River of Bears
    I was well aware I was heading into bear country. I could see that from my deck. In Girdwood, it wasn’t unheard of for bears to bury their heads in garbage cans or dog-food sacks stored on people’s porches. A friend of mine had his truck stolen by a bear. He was living up Crow Creek Road when he heard a commotion one morning, got up to investigate, and discovered his truck was gone. A black bear had climbed in through an open window and knocked it out of gear, sending truck and bewildered bear rolling down the driveway and off an embankment. (The bear was fine; the truck, not so much.) Even Anchorage, inhabited by Walmarts, Jiffy Lubes, and nearly half the population of Alaska, had bears in its backyard, and upon occasion, its front. Now and then a black bear or grizzly would forage its way into the land of car dealerships and mattress barns, crossing bike trails, lawns, sidewalks, parking lots, and busy roads before being stopped by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s urban wildlife conflict-resolution team, with a tranquilizer dart if public safely allowed, with a slug if not. Bears have been hit by cars in Anchorage. They’ve been hit by bicycles. Just the day before, as I was getting a capture the flag game underway with a group of kids, a young grizzly popped out of the woods. The hair on the back of my neck went red-alert, but the situation ended the way nearly all encounters do, with the bear taking one look, wanting no part of us, and motoring off like its butt was on fire.
    I had tremendous respect for bears, especially grizzlies—or brown bears as biologists refer to the larger, coastal dwellers—as powerful symbols of the wild lands I loved. I’d studied them as part of my senior project at Prescott College, and was convinced they were more tolerant of humans than the other way around. I also knew what they were capable of. Bears kill one or two people a year in this country. A person is much more likely to be killed by a dog, and even more likely to die of an allergic reaction to the sting of a bee. Although my parents would disagree, I wasn’t much of a risk taker. I never felt the need to BASE jump off a cliff or kayak whitewater courses more waterfall than river. But for me to avoid the kinds of places large predators roam would be unthinkable.
    Before a chance encounter with an indignant bear hijacked my dreams, my interactions with bears had ranged from amusing to annoying, and either way had left me with a good story to tell. Like the grizzly I came upon at Kluane Lake on my way up the Alaska Highway one summer. The bear was lying on its back on a rocky beach, tossing a driftwood log into the air, catching it, tossing it again, catching it, even giving it a little twirl, like a