The Grizzly Mind

The Grizzly Mind

At Glacier National Park in Montana, the conversation circles inevitably back to bears. Grizzly bears, to be exact. With its deep glacial folds and alpine meadows, the Northwestern Montana is prime grizzly habitat. But mostly, it is prime grizzly habitat because most of Glacier National Park is wild backcountry that most tourists prefer to avoid. Still, this does nothing to curb the ample warnings one faces from park rangers and park signage. Nor does it keep some of us from hoping that one afternoon, minding our business on a trail, we might come face-to-face—or at the very least catch a glimpse of—what may be the most feared and admired animal in North America.

M. and I caught a glimpse our third day in the park. We were 9,000 feet up the side of a mountain thick with tough alpine shrubs and rust-colored rock when I spotted—several thousand feet down in the valley basin—three patches of brown moving sluggishly and eating their way through a patch of huckleberry. We stood there admiring them from afar, a mother and two cubs. They moved like heavy equipment, with weight and purpose, their heads hung low, their shoulders hunched and thick. It was peak afternoon and though we could not make it out from afar, I knew they were slow because of the heat and were annoyed by the bugs flying about their eyes, ears, and snout. I knew so by the way they stopped every three or steps to lie down, only to be roused again and move a few steps, irritably.

We spent a few minutes alone with the bears before other hikers had caught up with us. If there is such a thing as a trophy sighting, grizzlies top the list at Glacier. Though M. and I wanted them to ourselves, I nonetheless pointed them out to the first passersby, a middle-aged couple who spoke in the wobbly tonality of a U.K. accent of some sort. The couple gasped upon seeing the bears.

“Good thing we’re up here and they’re down there,” said the woman.

Meanwhile, the grizzlies went about their afternoon of huckleberries and sunshine.

It occurs to me now that her remark was reflective of the overall human attitude toward grizzlies. Our collective consciousness would have us believe that grizzlies inspire fear and are to be avoided at all costs. There is something particularly curious about this since it is not at all difficult to avoid grizzlies in the United States. One must travel into the deeper folds of the mountains if one expects to catch even a fleeting glimpse. The chances of seeing one from the passenger seat of your Winnebago are slim, to say the least. In an era when the chances are highest that you will be shot on a city sidewalk or paralyzed for life in a car crash, it is surprising that the seemingly harmless grizzly is still married, in our minds, to danger.

Humans and grizzlies settled North America concurrently. We made our way over the land bridge to Pliestocene Alaska, lived there side-by-side for thousands of years, and likely traveled south into the present-day United States together. Like humans, grizzlies are highly flexible omnivores, which is why our histories are so intertwined: We are—or were—two species competing for the same food in the same place at the same time. We are—or were—also competing for our survival together.

It is the desire of any animal to protect its young. Some are better at it than others and grizzlies are among the finest. In North America, defending its offspring against lions, wolves, and other now-extinct predators, the grizzly learned to charge at its aggressor. With its massive frame and densely muscled legs, a charging grizzly is a terrifying sight, to say the least. Surrounded by newer and fiercer predators in this new land, grizzlies learned not only to charge when threatened, but to be aggressive right back. Because of our concurrent existence, it was—or is—only natural that a grizzly take a human life now and then.

Before the invention of the firearm, grizzlies stood at the top of the food chain in North America. Being our last known competitor we set about killing as many of them as we could. (By most accounts, the Lewis and Clark team set the standard for North American human-grizzly interaction, with members of the expedition shooting nearly 50 of them, mostly for the hell of it, referring to them in their official report as ghastly beasts worthy of extermination.)

Today, fewer than 2,000 grizzlies roam through the remote corners of North America—Glacier National Park being one of them, Yellowstone the other. Predation of humans by grizzlies is virtually non-existent, and it’s likely they never hunted us at all. So why the fear?

Standing there on the mountain, looking down at the three hulking brown animals, I couldn’t shake the overriding trepidation grizzlies inspired. Three animals, a mother and two cubs, harmlessly chomping their way through a patch of mouth-puckering berries on a hot June day, had the ability to challenge our human impulses. Days earlier, my wife and I had come within 5 feet of nearly a dozen Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. Despite their powerful, curled antlers and stallion-like muscles, something about the big sheep seemed harmless. And now, our knees were trembling at the sight of fat, furry bears a few thousand feet away.

That night at the hotel, we told everyone we could about the bears. And we weren’t the only ones. Others had spotted grizzlies and considered it the highlight of their trip. Indeed it was ours as well—not the mountains, or the Bighorns, or the Mountain goats, or the glaciers, or the sky, but the grizzlies.

The night before we left Glacier I had a dream about the bears. In the dream we were living in our two-bedroom home, just outside of Seattle. It was early in the morning and I stumbled out to make coffee as I normally do. I pulled up the blinds to our living room window and saw several of our neighbors lined up on the sidewalk. Some were clutching their children, others were snapping pictures with their cell phones. I ran outside to see what the fuss was about and peering over the shoulders of my neighbors I could make out the swaggering form of a grizzly. It’s head was hung low, each step looked like the bear’s paws were pulling heavy weights. One neighbor, a woman was so overwhelmed she ran up to give the bear a hug. The bear didn’t move. Some of us were paralyzed with fear. And the bear moved on.

I’ve thought about the significance of that dream ever since. It may have no significance at all, but the truth is grizzlies are the only animals left on the continent capable of stirring such deep reverence and humility in humans. We shot our way to the top of the food chain only to lose sight of our primal awareness. We were once on the same side and because that is no longer the case, we are in awe of them and afraid of them: In awe because they continue to exist despite our best efforts; fearful because their presence is a challenge, a reminder that we are not as significant as we like to believe. Like my neighbor hugging the bear in the dream, we want grizzlies to want us. But they know better than to depend on us for anything.

Seattle, Washington

July, 2009