[at-l] Doug Peacock/ Grizzley Years

[janl2 at mindspring.com (Jan Leitschuh)]

>From an interview in Natl. Geo. Adventure Magazine:

Why did you go into the wilderness after Vietnam?
  	

Like so many other veterans, I was so out of sorts when I came back. I couldn???t be around other people. I required a great deal of solitude. For me, the best place for that solitude is out in the hills, mountains, and valleys, by myself. Some people can get that same feeling in their backyard, and I don???t begrudge them a bit.

Anyway, I camped out, and by the end of the first summer I???d run into grizzly bears. They utterly riveted my attention. Which turned out to be exactly what I needed.
 
  	Why grizzlies?
  	

Because you really can???t be self-indulgent in grizzly country. You???ve got something bigger than you out there, something that can kill and eat you any time it chooses to, though it seldom does.

Being among grizzlies forces humility. And that???s what I needed, because that???s the emotional posture behind learning: humility.
 
  	When was the last time you felt that humility?
  	

Just last week in Yellowstone. I???m in grizzly country at least a couple of times a week. I can???t live without that feeling. I would utterly despair.From an Interview with Adventure magazine:


 
  	What???s the most memorable grizzly encounter you???ve had?
  	

There???ve been lots of them. The most memorable experiences are the ones where the bear really granted me quarter, had the grace to let me out of a situation where it really had the right to just chew my shoulder off. That???s a great, incredible lesson???the lesson of muscular restraint.

I still think about the time that I ran into a black grizzly on a ridge top after he finished an inconclusive fight with a sow and her yearling cub. I had to get past him on this knife-edge ridge to get to my little camp because a winter storm was blowing in. I decided I was going to try my luck with him. He was only 30 feet [9 meters] away when he noticed me.

By the way, this is a bear that I know well. He???s a cantankerous son of a bitch. Some years he cases and attacks and tries to kill all other bears. But he was my favorite grizzly there, this black grizzly.

When he saw me he came and slammed his paws down, 15 feet [5 meters] from me, and stopped. Stared right at me. Bears only do that when they???re being confrontational.

His ears were back, the ruff on his neck was up???all signs that I going to get charged. With a sow grizzly you might just get chewed on and you can play dead and maybe get away. I don???t really know what happens with a big male like that.

He stared at me for what felt like hours, but was probably only a minute or so. Then, almost sadly, he flicked his ears and looked off to the side, and I felt something pass between us.

He disappeared into the bush, and I shot by and got my ass up to the top and built a fire, which I almost never do in grizzly country, because I don???t want to bother bears.

But then after 45 minutes, here came the same grizzly. I could hear him in the brush. And though it was dark by then, I could see his eyes glowing red from the firelight.

He came all the way up to my fire, and I got some firebrands and backed him down the hill. But an hour later he came up the other side. This scene repeated itself until about two in the morning, when I finally passed out.

More:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0007/q_n_a.html

And, an Outside Magazine piece on the Treadwell incident by Doug Peacock:
http://outside.away.com/outside/news/200401/200401_blood_brothers_1.html
 

An excerpt:

TIMOTHY TREADWELL came to visit me in the early 1990s, after his first summers among Alaskan bears. He'd read my book, Grizzly Years, about the 14 seasons I spent camping in Montana and Wyoming's grizzly country after my return from the Vietnam War, and we talked about his decision???after nearly killing himself with an overdose of opiates in California???to go live with bears in 1990. Treadwell possessed a fragile sincerity that shouldn't be confused with naivet??. He was fearless, yet, as he wrote in Among Grizzlies, "keenly aware it takes only a single misinterpretation [of bear behavior] to get myself killed." I issued the usual admonitions, among them that he should be careful about conditioning bears to humans: Legal bear hunting is big business outside the 4.7-million-acre park, and though no poaching episodes have been recorded in Katmai, Treadwell would later claim to have repeatedly driven poachers away.

But if people had taken exception to Treadwell's methods during his lifetime, after his death the gloves came off. Former Katmai National Park superintendent Deb Liggett told the Anchorage Daily News how park officials had repeatedly warned Treadwell not to camp among bears???and even threatened to expel him from Katmai. She'd told Treadwell her staff would never forgive him if they had to kill a bear because of him.

Chuck Bartlebaugh, director of the national safety campaign Be Bear Aware, in Missoula, Montana, told the Anchorage paper that he worried about Treadwell's example: "We have a trail of dead people and dead bears because of this trend that says, 'Let's show it's not dangerous.'"

Treadwell's supporters disputed that implication, stressing that he had always cautioned people to avoid bears. But even his friends were at a loss to put the deaths into perspective. Dave Mattson, a wildlife biologist based in Arizona, told me that he was "struggling, really conflicted. Tim was a friend whose courage and dedication I admire above all. I fear ego was a factor, as it sometimes is for all of us. I know that adrenaline rush of wanting to get close to grizzlies. Respect means, for me, giving them their space."