Jason, there’s a bear. Ooh cool, where?

Cinnamon-colored black bear staring back at me in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, AK

“Jason”, she whispered forcefully. “Jason!” she whispered again even more urgently. “There’s a bear,” she informed me with a ghostly look on her face. “Oh cool, where!?!” I replied in absolute delight as I scanned across the glacier next to our trail. She slowly raised a pointed finger and dipped it toward the bushes next me and whispered in sheer terror, “Right there.” My eyes got huge as I looked down next to my feet and watched the black bear stand up on its hind legs only a couple of feet away. As I looked up to its face we briefly locked eyes. That was one of the most awesome and terrifying experiences of my life. I didn’t intend to stare straight into the bear’s eyes at such a close distance since that could potentially provoke a protective response. But it all happened so suddenly that I didn’t have time to think much less react intelligently. Luckily, however, the bear quickly dropped to all fours, turned around and grunted in frustration as it sauntered away.

My adrenaline spiked to a level that I’d never experienced before. Now I’ve seen hundreds of black bears and grizzly bears in the wild but never this freaking close! I was frozen in place as I didn’t want to make any big movements. Once the bear had walked out of sight my client and I swiftly and quietly scooted away. The irony is that I had just given my client a bear safety talk only minutes before. Then we accidentally stumbled into the perfect live scenario lesson. I couldn’t have planned or timed it better myself.

In finishing this story of my close-encounter-of-the-furry-kind, I want to highlight two key learning points: 1) The bear exhibited normal wild bear behavior and 2) we behaved accordingly. Although media reporting might generally suggest otherwise, wild bears are not vicious creatures that are hell bent on attacking humans. Rather, in this case the bear hoped that we wouldn’t see it and would pass by so it could continue eating berries. Interior bears in Alaska don’t have it as easy as their salmon-privileged coastal cousins. Berries are their primary source of food and they have a narrow window to eat as many as possible in only a few months during summer. So our lucky bear was simply minding its own business, chomping on berries to fatten up for winter and then likely hid in the bushes as it heard us approaching on the trail. It wanted nothing to do with us. But as luck would have it we happened to stop at that perfect spot on the trail to take a short break. What are the odds? Well, according to Murphy’s Law, pretty darn good. But we were prepared and did everything right. We stood still and showed no threat to the bear so it walked away. And I could only imagine that the bear must have been thinking to itself, “Stupid tourists.”