A Northwest Territorial Bear

There's a territorial park just north of the border on the highway linking Alberta to the Northwest Territories.  The park is something like Niagara Falls but only gets about 100 visitors a day (because the highway carries only about 100 cars a day). The park is on the west side of a long gorge with two falls (see photo gallery below). Since one of them is named Louise Falls, and my grandmother's name is Louise, I decided to stop there to camp (so if the bear would have eaten me, it would have been all my grandmother's fault).

Anyway, along the top of the gorge is a fairly level trail. Now and then there are trails to the river below, and one of those trails has a spiral staircase that lets you easily work your way down a fairly substantial cliff in order to get to the water. At around dusk, I walked down that staircase and sat down on a huge boulder right next to the river. Night was gradually falling (twilights up north are eternal it seems) and the river was roaring all around me (I was about 50 meters upstream from one of the falls).

As I was staring into the water, I distinctly had the impression, from whatever sixth sense an urban person like me might have, that there was a bear very close to me. In fact, I was expecting the bear to come and sit down next to me. My mind kept on saying ... no worries ... it's just a bear and he's just curious. It was a very persistent thought. But I didn't turn around to look. I just kept staring out at the water and made sure there was room next to me on the rock in case the bear wanted to join me (I *am* wierd).

Eventually, it started getting darker and colder and I was going to get up to leave. But something in my head kept saying to stay put. I really was getting impatient, but something said "stay here." So I did. And after about 3 minutes this huge beaver (well, I don't have much to compare it with but it was far bigger than I thought a beaver would be) swam up in the water and tread water only 2 or 3 meters in front of me. It just kept staring at me, often with both eyes. Finally, after at least a full minute, it ducked under the water. I suspect its home was under the boulder.

Well, I thought that was pretty dang cool. I was elated, in fact. So I merrily made my way back to the staircase. I knew there were bears in the area, and I knew that I needed to make noise (I tend to be very quiet when I walk - I'm always scaring the daylights out of people and that's the last thing anyone wants to do to a bear). So, I was clicking my tongue (earlier I'd gotten sick of singing to myself, and even more sick of talking to myself).

I walked quickly up the staircase, two steps at a time, and stopped clicking while I was climbing. When I popped out at the top (in particular, as I stood on the "P" in the above picture), there was a crashing sound to my left, and there was the bear (precisely on the "B"). It seemed that I looked at him before he looked at me (and that's not supposed to happen).

Now, at this juncture, the bear is supposed to think "Ooo. Big enchilada. I think I'll just skedaddle." But the bear didn't. He just looked at me.

We were pretty close together. I could not only see his cute little ears - I could also see the dozen or so little tufts of hair on the top of each of his cute little ears. And I could see that his front paws were pigeon-toed (if one can dare to compare any part of a bear with a pigeon). He was on all fours (far better than the alternative) and his shoulders were considerably taller than my waist. Probably about 1.35 meters, to be exact.

He was also skinny.

At this point, you're very aware of the fact that there is nothing between you and the bear. No fence. No trench. No ranger. No nothing. Just about 10 meters of smooth boardwalk on the nice main trail.

I could feel dozens of parts of my legs, and everything was screaming "run!" I was incredibly and unbelievably conscious of the soles of my feet, the feel of my boots on my ankles, and dozens of tendons in my legs.

On the other hand, my mind was signalling something totally different. It just kept saying "he's just curious" and even more strangely "he's skinny and curious, just like you." Some corner of my brain was even laughing, and not at all surprised that he was slowly lumbering his way toward me like a stiff old friendly golden retriever.

I averaged out my panic and my curiosity and decided that it would be just fine if I casually sashayed out of there. So, I walked backwards, slowly, until I got over a slight rise in trail and out of his sight. Then, I walked forwards, rather briskly, until I got back to the campground. I felt very very alive and oddly had no worries about sleeping in a tent. In fact, I stayed a second night (I noticed bear skat all over the place the next day and took care not to wander around at dusk the second night.)

When I got to Yellowknife, I told friends old and new about the bear. It was fun. I talked to a few outfitters while buying supplies, and if I happened to mention that I'd seen a bear, even all the old timers would stop what they were doing and listen really respectfully. I think everyone is trying to figure out how to get along with bears.

Fortunately, it was a black bear (they don't normally attack people), not a grizzly (they're far more aggressive), nor a polar bear (they actually hunt people ... the story is that if you see one, it's too late, because he's been stalking you for three days). In Yellowknife I bought a "bear banger" which is a flare that explodes with a huge bang and scares the heck out of everyone for miles around (and if it doesn't scare the bear, the outfitter drily told me, you'd best start making other plans).

My friends laughed really hard at the story because when I saw the bear, I did two very odd things. First, I resumed clicking my tongue (which would have made me sound like a chipmunk chattering away, or even worse, a caribou whose toes click when they walk). Second, I was staring this curious bear right in the eyes (and staring any animal right in the eyes is a sign of aggression and you really don't want to pull any macho maneuver like that around big clawed animals).

So, my curious bear was probably thinking to himself "Ahh. That smells like a big enchilada. However, it clicks like something tasty. On the other hand, it stares aggressively. That would mean it's a ... " (I think it was wise for me not to let it finish its contemplations :)

I still wonder why I was thinking about a curious bear when I was down by the river. It's a bit spooky, and some of my friends up in  Yellowknife claim that such feelings happen to them rather frequently up there. It's possible to think that the bear was actually down at the riverside and then climbed the cliff next to me when I was running up the staircase.

I really do think he was just curious.

Epilogue

I wrote that story in October, recalling an event that happened in August.  Now it's January, and I had a particularly poignant thought the other day.  Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that there *was* a bear right behind me as I was sitting on that rock.  Had I turned around, following my rational thought to gather information as opposed to my instinctive intuition to just relax, things could have turned out very differently indeed.

I would have found myself facing several hundred pounds of very wild and likely rather hungry bear.  He would have been about 5 meters away on the gravel of the shore, looking at me perched on this rather insignificant 3-meter wide boulder.  There would have been no way for me to return to shore, and the swirling water around me wasn't a much better alternative: not only can bears swim, but the falls pictured below would have been about 50 meters downstream in a very fast and deep current. 

That's rather sobering, particularly because the bear would have sensed my rather different emotional state.  As it was, I was as cool as a cucumber, and thus, in some instinctual sense, an animal that the bear had to regard as its approximate (and disinterested) equal.  I presented neither a challenge nor a free meal.  Had I turned around, I would no longer have been disinterested, my emotions would have been intense, and the bear's response would have been totally unpredictable.  Brrr.