To Smell a Bear
It was early, breakfast time for bear, and their count was rising. I stood amid mounds of glistening almond mix when, straight for me, lumbered a supersize male. The bear appeared like magic, materializing from deep forest. His plodding nonchalance and beady eyes evoked equal measures grace and menace. I was focused on focusing, that tiny green circle in my viewfinder, aglow — my cue — shoot, shoot, shoot. My best wildlife photo ever, years before, a moose sow and calf in curious pose, tracked on a hike with my wife in Yellowstone. The bark of the tree the moose stood behind was in the crispest detail — their wary, intense eyes staring me down — not so much.
Cheryl was thirteen hundred miles away, likely nestled in bed, and yet, just like in Yellowstone, loud and insistent in my ear.
“Get back. Eric. You’re too close.”
Bear of all size, snout, and hue grazed the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary, three acres of trampled grass and odd boulder within the northern Minnesota boreal. The bear count rose to well over a dozen at feeding — a honey-nut agglomerate lugged in orange, five-gallon pails by ecology grad students and troweled onto plywood platforms, rock slabs, and perch-worthy boulders — and fell to zero as the dew vanished, the feed consumed. By mid-day, every last bear had receded back into the cool sleeve of the forest.
But back to breakfast and voices in my head.
“Did you not hear me? I said you’re too close.”
The bear presented an intimate moment through the lens: side-lit needles of black fur sprung from a bulging corpus, filling the frame, delighting me. I snapped away, thinking, these could be good. Near enough now, I lowered my camera. Our shared path felt like bear path. Five bear-length rugs between us. Time to move. Or — time to move bear — was what I’d actually thought, imploring the beast to act. I was stuck.
I stood, heron-like, if herons waited on gator. On the grounds with me, eight workshop peers were oblivious, our instructor too, preoccupied, enthralled by his own bear folly. I felt alone. A raised viewing platform ten feet above was closed to the general public. Student interns were preoccupied, upending feed buckets, scooping up scat.
He kept coming. His big head swayed, prodigious paws padding across trampled grass, a sashay like some plus-size runway model. I was mesmerized. The wild space between us buzzed with dragonflies and charged air. The gap closed — three bear-length rugs. The forest collapsed on my shoulders. Was I really the fool who’d require rescue? How could this be happening to me? A spark of panic.
Run.
My body talking this time.
“Whatever you do, do not run,” Ernie had said. The prior evening at the mandatory safety meeting, Ernie, our tall, laconic workshop leader, straight from the West Virginia holler, was leaning on a t-shirt rack inside the Vince Shute Gift Shop. Nine of us sat on metal folding chairs under fluorescent lights near a cash register. In our laps rested clipboards and insurance waivers. A cub plush toy in hand, Ernie said, “You run, it thinks play. Black bear are curious, not aggressive.” Ernie’s accent was lilting, his tone firm. He had a way of making the obvious sound profound. “Trust me,” squeezing the plush toy, holding as if revealing his fastball grip, “you do not want to play with a four hundred pound bear.” He tossed the toy as I was signing my waiver, and it bounced off my head. Ernie’s alliance was clear — don’t be the fool.
Attacks were rare, I knew from research. Not just research specific to this trip, but over the years, reading books, watching documentaries, listening to experienced sources — hikers, park rangers, gift shop employees — try to quell my wife’s concerns; bears are more afraid of you, they dislike surprises. Alert them to your presence, wear bells. Think, big raccoons. Attacks, though rare, were most likely instigated by habituated bears. Oops. There I stood, among a dozen highly habituated bears. Ernie had whiffed on this factoid. At least the mothers and cubs registered our presence, keeping their distance, watching from the wooded perimeter. An audience with a taste for blood and nuts.
If my wife could see me now.
Finally, the training kicked in. Hands low, palms out to show I bore no food, I retreated. Slowly. Just like Ernie taught amid the Yeti mugs and novelty socks.
And just like the forest taught, the bear kept coming.
The four hundred or so pounds of advancing appetite wasn’t even the biggest or scariest I’d seen. Hades, named for his jet black coat and cross-hatch of pink scars on his face, was a walking nightmare. Hades seemed to emerge not from cool deep forest, but scorched netherworld, where a demonic game of tic-tac-toe was memorialized on his snout. My bear was black and tan, no scars, no tics, a handsome, stately bear. Handsome didn’t warrant a nickname.
Before my trip, I’d told people my goal was to smell a bear. I liked the reaction it got. What on earth compels you? It appealed to the rugged individualist I fancy myself. My true goal was a frame-worthy photo. Smelling a bear never actually occurred to me until I read Ian Frazier’s essay titled, Bear News. He writes of tracking three bears in snow along a mountain side in Montana:
“The bear tracks took an even straighter path than a man would. The big bear went through thick brush without breaking stride or putting its foot differently. The smaller sets of tracks — cubs’, probably — went off on skidding tangents and curlicues but always returned to parallel the big set of tracks. Of course, I was following the tracks not forward but back, in the direction they came from. If these were grizzlies, I did not want to come upon a mother with cubs. The time was late April, and I was hoping I might end up at the den the bears had just left; then I could stick my nose inside and find out what bears smell like.”
After I had told enough people, I started believing it, thinking I’d like to get near enough to smell a bear just like Ian Frazier. I’d forgotten all about his smelling not bear, but their empty den.
As the bear closed, the last thing on my mind was its smell.
Bears are quiet. More than once, a workshop peer would say, “Friend behind you,” when, lowering my camera, I’d find one, too close. It was easy to see them as big dogs until wilderness sounds — cricket chirps, raven caws — were abruptly muted, disrupted by an aggravated bear. Asserting dominance with a frenzied lurch through brush, a bear snapped twigs, broke limbs, and exercised authority by acceleration. Relaxed bears captivate. Agitated bears command all species’ attention.
I took focused shots of black bear in all coat colors of beer: black and tan, chocolate stout, brown ale, golden pilsner.
Alcohol had been commanding my attention for years before I realized, with my wife’s encouraging, a change in habit was overdue and required. And I changed, in my way, swearing off daily consumption, yet indulging, mostly while visiting family and friends out of state. This went on for years with diminishing success. Severing the final strands proved a challenge. Drinking was part of my identity since I was sixteen. Rugged beer drinking man.
Alcohol had been advancing on me in a slow, inexorable march. The disease unrelenting. It receded without weakening, a sort of hibernation, for months, only to emerge fanged and hungry. The day eventually arrived, nine months before the workshop, when alcohol pinned me to the mat. My wife, as referee, in a loud and insistent directive — get help or get counted out — prompted me to attend an AA meeting. Anything but AA, I’d thought. I’d rather die. Share my feelings? Admit weakness? Hold hands in a circle of men in ill-fitting jeans and say the Our Father? Shoot me now. I thank the stars (or higher power, as AA frames it) my first visit wasn’t horrible. If I’d known they start every meeting asking — anyone hear for their first meeting? — and tailor the meeting to the first-timer, I’d have turned and run. I would have sat in my car in the parking lot the whole hour. Who knows how long the charade. Now, two years on, I go every Sunday morning. I’d say its like church, but I put down the Bible about the age I picked up the bottle. I stay the hour, sometimes share my story, but I can’t help ducking out before the concluding Our Father.
The bear came close enough to scare me. Sometimes I wonder, if I’d stood my ground, how close would danger have come?
There’s got to be a price for a misrepresented wish come true. I could have tripped, been crushed under a black and tan pretty boy, his wild heart beating on mine, his hot breath, my last smell on earth.
But no, I kept stepping back, working my steps for longer than I expected necessary, when the bear decided he’d made his point, and turned his attention elsewhere.