The summer after my sophomore year in high school I got to go to Alaska with my family. While we were there we went on a float trip from a lake in the mountains where the river originated all the way down to the sea. It lasted a week and we fished the entire way down catching approximately sixty fish per day per person. (It was all catch and release with the exception of a couple of days where we ate a couple of the salmon that we caught.)
One of the hazards of being out in the Alaskan wilderness is coming into contact with rather large grizzly bears. I am still alive, kicking, and devoid of any large scars so I didn’t get into close contact with them, but bears were definitely something that we always had to watch out for.
After being in a rubber raft all day, my brother, Joseph, and I liked to stretch our legs so we would always go exploring around the campsite. One day we were walking along the bank of the river when we came upon a bloody salmon. It wasn’t one of the rotten / rotting salmon that we were used to seeing though. This one looked like it had been in great shape until rather recently. We went closer and noticed that the blood around the salmon was still bright red and runny. We started feeling a little nervous. We saw something in a patch of mud a little ways away and went over to see what it was.
After being in a rubber raft all day, my brother, Joseph, and I liked to stretch our legs so we would always go exploring around the campsite. One day we were walking along the bank of the river when we came upon a bloody salmon. It wasn’t one of the rotten / rotting salmon that we were used to seeing though. This one looked like it had been in great shape until rather recently. We went closer and noticed that the blood around the salmon was still bright red and runny. We started feeling a little nervous. We saw something in a patch of mud a little ways away and went over to see what it was.
It was a paw print of a bear. I was wearing a bucket hat and took it off my head and set it next to the print. The print was bigger than my hat. Joseph and I nervously looked at each other and then started to glance around. Our eyes found a ridge not too far away from where we were. We let our eyes wander up to a silhouette, the silhouette of a bear, a really big bear.
The two of us decided we shouldn’t run, that would probably be a bad idea, and so we acted like we were following another creek, one that conveniently lead back to the camp. We informed the guides of our discovery. They all immediately picked up their guns and went to check out the footprint and to see if they could scare the bear away. (Note: the guns were only for protection. They were shot only into the air to scare the bears so they wouldn’t get to close to us.)
That night no one slept that great, the thought of the bear just hanging around gave everyone the willies. The next morning when I woke up, the first place I looked was at the ridge, the bear was still there. Breakfast was a hurried affair that morning, everyone was anxious to get out of the bear’s way.
We found out later that the guides had all taken turns keeping watch all night long and that the bear had never been far away, always keeping an eye on the camp. (Because it was summer in Alaska, the sun almost never set and it rarely actually got dark.) During the trip, we sighted bears several more times, most often as they were on the shore and we were in the river, not as they were watching us sleep.
