his early days and never cottoned to his style.
“He thought he was one with the bears,” he told
me as we watched Bear Melissa tend to her
cubs. “He’d swim with them. He thought he was
invincible, and you can’t do that with grizzlies.”
Brad flew over Alaska for the first time with
his father when he was 16 and saw a field filled
with 50 bears. He asked the pilot if they could
land and the pilot said, “Are you crazy? They’d
tear the plane apart.” (Brad has to dispel this
Alaska myth even today.) A quarter-century
later, Brad takes intrepid travelers to meet bears
up close, so they can see that the creatures are
among the most fascinating on the planet.
He pointed out a well-scarred fellow and told
us that bears have remarkable healing
capabilities. “A man cut that way would die of
an infection.”
He paused. “I know all the healing herbs and
plants, so I’d survive.”WE SPENT our days in quiet contemplation,
watching bears nurse their cubs, sunbathe, and
swim in the creeks. Maybe it was Brad and
Teresa’s confidence, but I never felt a moment of
fear. We saw other mammals as well. One day,
we heard a distant smacking noise that
disrupted our reverie. Eventually, we turned
around and there was a whale slapping its tail on
the surface of the bay.Weirdness always lurked. It could be comical,
like the female bear that tried to rouse her male
partner for some sexy time. Or it could be
deadly. Brad told us about another trip to this
spot, when the group had watched a mama bear
fight off a potentially murderous male, only for
another male to slip in behind her and devour
one of her cubs. “No one said anything for the
rest of the day,” said Brad matter-of-factly.
Another evening—in early summer the sun
doesn’t set in Katmai until around 11 p.m.—it
seemed like we might see another
heartbreaking example of death by natural
selection. A mama and her two cubs were
napping by a creek bed, occasionally getting up
to sip water. An older male, with a flap of torn
skin dangling from his jaw, lingered 50 yards
away, seemingly content to eat grass. But he
kept moving closer to the cubs, like a pickpocket
on a crowded Manhattan street zeroing in
slowly on a rich man’s wallet. Then he moved
toward the mama, who turned and roared at
him, delay ing his cha rge just long enough to
g ive her cubs time to va nish into t he g rass. The
old carnivore gave up, out of breath. A few
minutes later, we could hear the mama mewl
for her cubs. The kids mewled back in a game of
Marco Polo. They reunited back at the creek.
They disappeared into the sunset and we all
breathed again.JONATHAN KINGSTON/GETTY IMAGES. ILLUSTRATION BY MAY PARSEYDISCOVERY
A humpback whale
breaches off the
coast of Kodiak
Island.TRIP PLANNER
Natural Habitat
Adventures offers the
eight-day Great Alaskan
Grizzly Encounter from
June through September.The tour costs US$8,895,
plus an additional US$595
for the floatplane ride.
Medical evacuation
insurance is required.
nathab.com.60 SEPTEMBER 2019 / TRAVELANDLEISUREASIA.COM
A laska
Katmai National Park & PreserveKodiakAnchorageGULF OF ALASKA