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background. She was a golden beauty out of
a Disney fi lm, while the guys looked like
they had been on a bender. They were
shedding last year’s coats for summertime,
and their fur was bare and mottled in spots.
One of the dudes was larger—maybe
400 kilos to the other’s 250. 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. Slightly Smaller Bear 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 fi nal growl of superiority.
We were maybe 20 metres away.THOSE 20 METRES were the farthest we
would ever be from the bears. Needless to
say, don’t try this at your local state park.
The bears of Katmai are diff erent 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—which
means ‘bear’ in Latin—a converted crab-
fi shing 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 fi lm Grizzly
Man. Brad knew Treadwell from 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.” FROM TOP: BRAD JOSEPHS/COURTESY OF NATURAL HABITAT; SHUTTERSTOCKCLOSE ENCOUNTER
From top:
A fl oatplane takes
bear-watchers
from Kodiak Island
to Katmai; bears
fi shing in Katmai
National Park.