TRAVELANDLEISUREASIA.COM / SEPTEMBER 2019 59
female watched in the background. She was a
golden beauty out of a Disney film, while the
guys looked like they had been on a bender.
They were shedding for summertime, and their
fur was bare and mottled in spots.
One of the dudes was larger—maybe 400
kilos to the other’s 270. Big Bear grew less
amused that Slightly Smaller Big Bear was
encroaching on his grass. Over 45 minutes, we
watched Big Bear, scars of other battles lining
his face, slowly advance on the little guy. The
smaller of the two drew back, but Big Bear
followed at a distance, doing a cowboy walk as
he urinated into the tracks of his retreating
colleague, which is something bears do.
Slightly Smaller Bear withdrew to a patch of
grass on the river’s edge. But this didn’t placate
Big Bear. They eyed each other warily for a few
minutes. And then Big Bear roared and lunged.
The two stood and exchanged paws and claws to
the neck and face for what seemed like forever
but was actually three minutes. After being
released from his antagonist’s malevolent bear
hug, Slightly Smaller Bear fell on his back—the
position of submission—and Big Bear gave a
final growl of superiority.
We were maybe 20 meters away.
THOSE 20 METERS were the farthest we would
ever be from the bears.
The bears of Katmai are different from
bears in other parts of the state, Brad
explained, because hunting isn’t allowed in
national parks. “They see us as friendly or
neutral because they have no experience of
someone creeping up on them and shooting
their face off with a shotgun.”
Brad and his wife, Melissa, the onboard chef,
have been running trips into Katmai for years,
now on the Ursus, a converted crab-fishing boat
with spare, compact cabins. Melissa’s salmon
made up for whatever creature comforts we
had to go without.
We didn’t linger too much on the boat,
anyway. One afternoon near Kamishak Bay—
Brad was loath to give coordinates, lest other
guides steal his best spots—we settled on a
creek bed and sat on our buckets. Brad pointed
out a regal mama with a golden coat and two
cubs tailing her rump. “She’s the bravest,
coolest bear I’ve ever seen, so I named her
Melissa,” he whispered. He cracked that in the
summer he spends more time with Bear
Melissa than Wife Melissa.
We were perched in grass where Timothy
Treadwell once walked among grizzlies. A
would-be bear-whisperer with a narcissistic
streak, Treadwell was mauled and eaten, a
story recounted by Werner Herzog in the 2005
film Grizzly Man. Brad knew Treadwel l fromFROM LEFT: A bear
fishing in Katmai
National Park; a
floatplane takes bear-
watchers from Kodiak
Island to Katmai.