[at-l] The WOTD has been changed to WOW!

[Slyatpct at aol.com (Slyatpct@aol.com)]

Long.... and spine tingling.


 
By Thomas Curwen and David Petersen
Special to The Times
 
August 2, 2005
 
They were paddling easily in the endless Arctic sunlight when they spotted 
the bear, its blond-brown fur blending into the surroundingtundra. Perhaps 500 
pounds, they guessed, but at close range allgrizzlies look big, and they were 
spectacularly close to this one.
 
Kalin Grigg and Jennifer Stark were thrilled. They paddled slowly, sotheir 
oars would not splash or flash in the sun. They wanted tophotograph the animal 
and hoped not to spook him, but as they reachedfor their binoculars and camera, 
they noticed something else.
 
The river they were rafting, the Hulahula, bent left. On the far bank,just 
beyond the bear, a tumble of brightly colored camping gear wasscattered across 
the beach. Their guide, Robert Thompson, first spottedthe strange disarray. 
 
This doesn't look good, he said quietly, almost to himself. It looked as if a 
small tornado had razed someone's bivouac.
 
Robert was Inupiat. He had grown up in Alaska, and he knew what he was 
seeing. 
 
This doesn't look good at all, he said again.
 
On a rock to the left of the bear sat a seagull, a scavenger on the scene. 
Two more flashed through the willows.
 
 
 
Longtime lovers of wild places and wild things, Kalin and Jennifer hadcamped, 
hiked and watched grizzlies in the lower 48 states. But theyhad always 
dreamed of visiting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.Both are passionate 
conservationists. He is 50. She is 33. He teachessociology at Fort Lewis College in 
Durango, Colo., high in the San JuanMountains. Jennifer also works at the 
college. 
 
Last year, when the Bush administration focused its attention on theoil 
reserves in the Arctic refuge, Kalin and Jennifer began to fear forits future. 
Known as the Serengeti of North America, the refuge is homenot only to bears, but 
musk oxen, caribou, Dall's sheep and hundreds ofspecies of birds. It is a 
wild, at times forbidding, but notthreatening place, and the couple believed they 
could better defend itif they had personally experienced it.
 
So they sold a car, held yard sales, emptied their bank accounts,outfitted 
themselves and hired Robert to take them down the Hulahula,which cuts through 
the North Slope from the Romanzof Mountains to theBeaufort Sea. Named by 
Hawaiian whalers who hunted bowheads near itsdelta nearly a century ago, the Hulahula 
provided stunning access tothe wilderness they wanted most to see.
 
Robert himself is a window into the wild. He is committed to preservingthe 
Arctic refuge, a place Inupiats call simply "Home." He has lived inKaktovik on 
Barter Island, near the Hulahula delta, for close to 20years. He traps, hunts, 
fishes and gathers food for his family. He isbest known for guiding 
photographer Subhankar Banerjee through therefuge for his 2003 collection of images, 
"Seasons of Life and Land."
 
Together, Kalin, Jennifer and Robert took a bush plane to theheadwaters of 
the Hulahula and put in under cold Arctic skies in theshadow of Mt. Chamberlain 
at 9,020 feet. The whole scene stole theirbreath. Ahead of them lay the 
Hulahula Valley, cradled by a steep,treeless tundra angling down to the coastal 
plain, a patchwork of ice,lakes and barren ground.
 
They had been on the river now for seven days. Their adventure wasnearly 
over. It was a little after 4 p.m. on a Saturday in June.
 
 
 
The grizzly was directly across the river from them, no more than 40yards 
away. Since the animal was upwind and had not caught their scent,they decided to 
stop and search the trashed camp through theirbinoculars. They beached their 
raft in a shallow gravel chute on thefar bank.
 
See if you can find my extra ammunition, Robert said as heuntied the webbing 
that secured their gear. In a waterproof container,he kept a Ruger .45 
revolver. He also wanted the Globalstar satellitephone.
 
The raft was 14 feet long, inflatable, about 6 feet wide androbin's-egg blue. 
As the two men searched through the gear, Jennifereyed the grizzly through 
binoculars. He was staring at them and theirraft, and behind him, she could see 
a knee-high rubber boot, a tennisshoe, an article of fleece clothing and a 
bear-resistant food canister,which was unopened. This puzzled her; why was the 
bear staying around?She looked but could not see a boat or any people. Maybe 
they were on ahike or an excursion down the river.
 
Walt, Robert said into the phone, this looks like a bad situation. 
 
He was talking to Walt Audi, a legendary bush pilot who owns a local flying 
service. Wehave a bear in a camp with what looks like three smashed-in tents, 
andat this point we can't see anybody. We don't know where the people are.I 
think it would be a good idea if you get Search and Rescue up here,quick.

He, Kalin and Jennifer would wait, and maybe the bear would leave, allowing 
them to cross the river and explore the camp.
 
Robert knew bears, and in all of his years roaming the refuge, he hadnever 
had a bad experience with a grizzly. It was coastal polar bearsthat had given 
him trouble. In the interior, however, he felt safewithout a rifle or a shotgun ?
 only the Ruger ? and he knew handguns,dating from his tour as a military 
policeman in Vietnam. Besides, Kalinand Jennifer each had a can of hot-pepper 
bear spray.
 
Still, Robert viewed grizzlies with cautious respect, and he wanted this one 
to leave. 
 
Get outta here, he shouted across the river. Hey, bear! Take off. The grizzly 
paid no attention.
 
Robert slapped a paddle hard on the water ? whap! Whap! He yelled again. Get 
outta here, bear.

The grizzly, Jennifer thought, was starting to show some interest inthem. The 
river here was narrow, no more than 2 feet deep, andcrisscrossed with 
shallows and sandbars. She knew it wouldn't be anobstacle if the bear decided to 
cross. 
 
I'd like to go, she said. It was a terrible feeling, trying toreconcile her 
growing fear with her sense of responsibility to thepeople who had occupied the 
camp.
 
OK, Robert agreed, finally. Let's move downriver a ways.

As they dragged their raft over bars of gravel about 200 yardsdownstream, 
Jennifer, an experienced rafter, looked for the fastestcurrent, just in case.
 
The grizzly had started to move around. They watched him as he climbedinto a 
copse of willows just behind the camp, where he appeared to befeeding. They 
watched him as he dropped down to the river's edge andstarted pawing at a black 
and blue fleece. They watched him as hesuddenly started wading across the 
river, tramping through the water asif there were no current at all, until he 
stood on their side and thendisappeared behind a small knoll. 
 
Let's get out of here! Jennifer said. 
 
But it wasn't that simple anymore. By crossing the river, the bear hadchanged 
the dynamic. It would be risky to turn their backs on him, notknowing what he 
was up to.
 
Binoculars in hand, Kalin jumped atop a boulder, trying to keep the animal in 
sight. He's rolling around on the snow and playing. He's probably going to go 
up on the ridge. Jen, come take a look.

Jennifer paused for a moment. They hadn't come all the way to therefuge for 
her to be the spoiler. She took the binoculars, found thebear and felt the back 
of her neck tingling. Her breath came hard.
 
The bear wasn't playing. He was cleaning himself, and now he was on the move.
 
 
 
At home, Jennifer and Kalin have a big Labrador retriever named Hobbes,and a 
smaller, mixed-breed Lab named Sally. Whenever Hobbes and Sallyare up to no 
good and know they're being watched, they move in atelltale way. It's a slinking 
motion, a running side-step and then astop, a running side-step and then a 
stop. 
 
Which is exactly what the grizzly did, bringing him closer to wherethey 
stood. Then he reared up, as if he had caught their scent.Standing 6 feet tall, he 
stared at them intently.
 
Every fear has its own feeling. There's the fear when you hear a soundin the 
middle of the night. The fear when you're approached by astranger on a 
darkened street. The fear when your house is broken into.This time, fear came from 
feeling small and slow and insignificant inthe presence of a creature who views 
you as prey. It wasn't panic. Itwas a solitary, strangely confined feeling.
 
We gotta go, Jennifer said. We gotta go. 

I have to make a stand, Robert said. And if it comes to that, I don't want to 
have to try to kill this bear with a handgun from a moving raft.
 
OK, whatever you need to do, Kalin said.
 
Jennifer walked the raft into the river and held it there just in case.The 
bear crested a small dune 40 yards away and started to chargetoward them.
 
For a moment, Robert paused. Alone, he would have dealt with the bearthen and 
there, but Jennifer and Kalin clearly wanted to avoid aconfrontation.
 
Let's get the hell out of here! he yelled. 
 
They jumped into the raft, and their momentum helped launch thecumbersome 
inflatable into the balky current. They pulled hard at thewater. The river was 40 
yards across and braided with bars of sand andgravel. At one point the raft 
started to scrape bottom, forcing them tojump out, calf-deep, and push, paddles 
in hand, bear spray in mouth,push and push, until they were floating free 
again. Back aboard,Jennifer glanced over her shoulder.
 
The grizzly was running along the riverbank, closing fast. Then he was 
running beside them.
 
The bear's coming down the bank, Robert yelled.
 
Let Kalin and me take care of the boat, Jennifer said, and you get ready to 
shoot.

OK. Just don't get between me and the bear. They knew they first had the 
revolver, then the bear spray. That was their defense, the game plan. But beyond 
that, nothing. 
 
The bear's crossing the river again, Robert shouted.
 
The huge animal clambered up the opposite bank. There, the current ranfaster 
and the embankment was higher ? perfect for leaping down ontothe passing raft. 

 
Keep us away from that bank, Robert called out.
 
But that's where the current is! 

The bear crashed full speed along the shore, disappearing briefly behind a 
knoll, then reappearing, almost next to the raft.
 
Jennifer struggled to steer toward the middle, but Kalin's strokesoverpowered 
hers. The raft began side-slipping, passing just below thehigh bank and then 
into a more open stretch.
 
Now he's in the river, Robert yelled.
 
Kalin looked back. The bear was muscling forward, full speed, mid-channel, 
and gaining on them. Thirty yards. Twenty-five.
 
 
 
Neither Kalin nor Jennifer had come to the Arctic to kill a grizzly.But now 
Kalin was convinced there was no other way to escape. To stopan attacking bear 
with the Ruger, Robert would have to hit it in thehead or the spine. Each 
bullet would have to count, and for theanimal's sake and for their own, he could 
not risk wounding it.
 
We'll handle the boat, Jennifer said again. You get ready to shoot.
 
She and Kalin could hear its huge paws slapping the water. All Jennifercould 
do was paddle and focus on the river ahead. Paddle and hope theydidn't beach 
on a sandbar. Paddle and wait for the crash of therevolver ? or the explosion 
of the raft when the bear clawed at it andsnapped at it, lunging aboard.
 
Now he was 50 feet behind them and closing.
 
Back home, Jennifer worked summers as a commercial river rafter, oftenon the 
Yampa River. She knew water. Ahead, she saw it turn darker andmore turquoise. 
That meant it was deeper, faster.
 
I'm going to have to shoot, Robert said, his voice oddly calm, as if he were 
merely asking them to cover their ears.
 
Jennifer glanced back again. The bear was swimming deeply, almostunderwater, 
his nose high and snorting like a dog. He was 30 feet away.
 
As Robert raised his Ruger to shoot, Jennifer spotted a boulder intheir path. 
It was the size of a dinner table; shallow water surgedover its top. River 
runners call them "sleepers," and for a moment shewas back home, grinning and 
calculating how to shave a sleeper so closethat the rafter behind her would not 
see it in time and end up parkedon top, beaten and embarrassed. It was a game, 
and she was good at it.
 
Let's shave it, she yelled, shouting paddle commands to Kalin. A couple more 
strokes. Now! Now! Now! 

As the sleeper slipped past, inches to spare, everyone turned to look, each 
falling silent.
 
The grizzly, still swimming at full speed, its long fur flowing backand forth 
rhythmically in the water, slammed hard into the rock.Stunned and panting, he 
climbed onto the flooded boulder and stoodupright ? wet, huge, a stone's 
throw behind them. In that instant, timefroze.
 
Surrounded by the rushing river, water cascading off his back, the wetcoat 
gleaming in the sun, the towering animal that had tried so hard tokill them now 
seemed suddenly, eerily lovely.
 
Horrifyingly beautiful, thought Jennifer.
 
After a few moments, the bear lunged off the boulder and splashed backto 
shore and resumed trotting along the bank in pursuit of the raft,but his gait 
seemed less determined.
 
Still paddling hard, Jennifer, Kalin and Robert opened their lead to 50 
yards.
 
Jennifer felt herself collapsing. Just stop, please. Would you please just 
stop? she begged the bear. She was soaked in sweat, her back muscles burned, and 
she felt them beginning to cramp.
 
We've got about 150 yards on him now, Robert announced.
 
After 45 minutes and more than half a mile, the grizzly had finally stopped, 
so far as they could tell.
 
Adrenaline kept everyone paddling hard until Robert said, I've got to get 
back on the phone. We've got to get somebody up there to that camp.

The call was insistent.
 
Walt, he said, this is very serious. The bearjust chased us. You've got to 
get somebody up here. There's anothergroup somewhere behind us. If they come 
down into that camp andencounter the bear ?. 
 
Jennifer remembered how she had balked when Robert tried to show herhow to 
use his GPS device. She now understood how important it was.
 
Five miles farther downriver, they stopped at an uninhabited 
clapboardsurvival cabin. Its door was pushed in, a can of caulking compound inthe upstairs 
loft gnawed upon. 
 
Later that night, they heard a helicopter and stepped outside, watchingit 
pass low to the south. Scenes from the chase kept playing in theirheads. They 
talked about the missing campers, the people they had hopedto find here at the 
cabin. 
 
I should have shot that thing, Robert said.
 
Night brought thick fog, gleaming bright in the summer sun. In themorning, 
Robert called Walt again and learned that the grizzly had beenkilled. Searchers 
found the bodies of Richard and Katherine Huffman, anattorney and a retired 
schoolteacher from Anchorage, a couplewell-experienced in the Alaskan bush.
 
Every sign suggested they had been responsible campers. They kept theirfood 
in a bear-proof container and went so far as to stop to cook, toeat and wash 
their dishes well upstream from where they slept. And theyhad a rifle in their 
tent. The cocking lever was pulled back, but theweapon had not been fired.
 
The Huffmans were the first people on record to be killed by a grizzly in the 
refuge.
 
The bear, shot four times in the legs, head and heart, was airlifted tothe 
University of Alaska at Fairbanks. A necropsy showed it was thesame bear that 
attacked the Huffmans, though authorities say they don'tknow why. He was a 
typical male grizzly for the Arctic north, 7 yearsold and 300 pounds ? considerably 
less than they had guessed.
 
The bear seemed to have acted within the parameters of his predatorynature, 
especially in the context of this ecosystem. Neither thegrizzly nor the 
Huffmans appeared to have done anything "wrong."
 
 
 
News accounts of the attack rolled out more statistics. In Alaska,about six 
people a year are injured in bear attacks, according to aFish and Game 
spokesman. 
 
Two-thirds of the victims are hunters who surprise bears at closerange, 
prompting the animals to react in instinctive defense ofthemselves, their young or 
their food.
 
Some reports focused specifically on the Arctic National WildlifeRefuge. S
ince Congress began debating oil drilling in the area, therefuge has seen a 5% 
increase in visitor inquiries since 2003,according to Richard Voss, the refuge 
manager for the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service. Last year, between 60 and 100 
people floated theHulahula.
 
For Kalin and Jennifer, encountering a killer grizzly only strengthened their 
feelings for protecting the refuge.
 
"What that bear did for us was shatter the idyllic, romantic image 
ofwilderness and bring home the pragmatic reality of what a hugeprivilege and 
responsibility it is to actively participate in theday-to-day workings of natural 
wildness," Jennifer said, weeks later."Once, all the world was wild. That was the 
world the human animalevolved in, and for. And that fact alone makes the final 
few fragmentsof original wildness worth saving."
 
"Whether we 'need' wild places in some utilitarian way or not, theyhave 
intrinsic value and deserve to exist apart from our experience ofthem," added 
Kalin. "But we do need wild natural places, because weneed wild natural experiences 
to help define and structure our overlycivilized lives. And we need to be 
willing to enter such places ontheir terms, not ours."
 
Even so, and without irony, both Jennifer Stark and Kalin Grigg acceptthe 
fact that venturing into such places requires preparation,sometimes the 
preparation to kill in selfdefense.
 
"The decision whether to carry a weapon, or bear spray, or nothing atall," 
Kalin said, "is a personal choice based on one's felt need forsecurity in a 
defensive situation. But with or without a weapon,wilderness travel requires 
people to become personally andexperientially educated about the meaning of true 
wildness."
 
"And," Jennifer added, "we'd go back tomorrow."
 
*
 
 
Thomas Curwen is the editor of Outdoors. David Petersen is theauthor of "On 
the Wild Edge: In Search of a Natural Life." They can bereached at 
outdoors@latimes.com.