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It's been nearly two decades since I set out to become a bear guide in the wilds of Canada.
For a child of the English Home Counties who thought that living in nature meant navigating hedgerows, watching squirrels, and drinking half pints of lemonade shandy in a country pub, it was quite a departure.
Arriving in British Columbia's backcountry I was, in the parlance of the gold and silver prospectors that had arrived in the valley a century and quarter before me, a tenderfoot.
My initial encounter with a bear - a small black skittish animal in a campground - was far from auspicious.
With the stern advice I had received from Canadian park wardens still ringing in my ears, I forgot everything in a moment of blind panic and turned and bolted for my vehicle.
Later that summer I put down a deposit on an off-grid conglomeration of cabins and sheds with my late wife Kristin.
How could we resist? The property was called Grizzly Bear Ranch and came replete with wooden walk boards and lavish amounts of incongruous and mostly fake cowboy kitsch.
That autumn we came across our first grizzly bear. She was gorging on feral apple trees in a long-deserted ghost town a dozen miles from the ranch.
Apple - as she became known - was destined for immortality.
After she was shot by a trophy hunter she became the poster girl of a political campaign we ran that culminated in the banning of grizzly bear hunting in British Columbia.
Today photographs of Apple - she was a smallish, hairy, silver-tipped grizzly so typical of those that live in the wintry interior of western Canada - hang in cafes and galleries.
For my part, I was to have a less celebrated future. But building on some of the skills I learned after hundreds of hours watching Apple raise two sets of cubs, I eventually became a fully-certified and professional bear guide.
Being a bear guide is a wonderful but perilous business.
The peril comes not from where it might be expected - the prospect of a set of grizzly gnashers furiously bearing down on you deep in the wilderness - but from the excitement and expectation of each new guest that comes under your wing.
Just as a journalist is only as good as their last story, or an actor only as guide as their last film, so a bear guide is only as good as their last bear.
And so, each time a new guest arrives, regardless of my lifetime tally (somewhere between a thousand and two thousand bears at this point) I must reset the counter and start again.
For the guests - many of whom have put aside for years for the chance to watch a wild bear in the Canadian West - it a long dreamed of opportunity. But with expectation can come disappointment. And it is my job to deliver.
The passage of time has, of course, changed both me and my methods.
I no longer carry the shotgun I did for the first few months - I was convinced back then that every bear in the bush had an incisor with my name on it.
When I meet a bear at close quarters my heart no longer leaps out of my chest and the urge to turn and leg it no longer grips me.
I have also learned about bears from many hours I have spent on my knees poring over marks in the dirt. I have become something of an expert in discerning the nuances of their scat.
I am now a level three animal tracker - not the highest category but up there in some pretty good company. And I like to think I have a developed sense of bear behaviour.
Nevertheless there are times when I have to wonder if all the thousands of hours in the field have improved what I can offer my guests.
On one recent spring day I hiked a number of miles with guests to a favourite avalanche chute, convinced that grizzlies awaited us.
After an hour of fruitless scanning, we hiked back.
Then on the way home, just as I had given up, we came around a corner and saw two black bears. They were - how do I put this tenderly - mid canoodle.
When we arrived the female scampered off into the bush coyly. The male, who had been building up a head of amorous steam, turned towards us with a sour look and then lowered his head.
He had probably been waiting a year for this frolic - and we had now ruined his moment.
Ursus coitus interruptus.
For a moment or two the male bear seemed to weigh taking revenge for the calamity we had visited upon his love life. He peed copiously in our general direction. But there were a group of us and he must have realised that aggression was never going to work.
In the end our ursine Romeo sidled off after his wilderness Juliette.
The guests that day - they were the first of our spring season - saw 10 bears in all. The weather was wonderful. We hiked in the sub-alpine and waded shallow mountain streams.
On the last night we pulled on our swimmers and had a sauna and cold plunge on the platform we have built above the river and in the shadow of the snowy Selkirk Mountains.
For the best grizzly viewing of the season, sadly, we had to wait until a day we were explicitly not looking for bears. Two of us were on our way to recertify our first aid training (the eleventh time for me) in a distant town.
We drove around a corner on a dirt road about an hour from home and there was a bear. It was a female grizzly, right by the roadside, in the hot afternoon sun. As we watched two cubs emerged and paraded leisurely in front of us. (See the video above.)
It was thrilling, but also unexpected. Grizzlies don’t generally like roadsides, they don’t like the afternoon heat, and they often don’t like being ogled at from a car.
And yet.
I am, I am proud to say, no longer a tenderfoot. I have beaten down five or six pairs of hiking boots on the wildlife trails around the lodge. But I am also, it seems, still a novice.
And when it comes to the wilderness, the bears are still the masters. And they never cease to surprise.
NEWS & LINKS
+ We have just finished our spring viewing season and the last guests have left. We will be opening again in September for autumn grizzly-viewing. Some of our slots are now fully-booked but others, especially towards the end of October, when the viewing has been great the last couple of years, still have openings. See here for more.
+ We have been watching Diary of the Grizzly Man, a series showing the adventures of Timothy Treadwell who spent 13 years in Alaska surrounded by bears before being killed by one of their number. Werner Herzog made a movie about Treadwell called Grizzly Man, but this series is far more extensive. Treadwell is a controversial character and has his admirers and detractors but, regardless of where you stand, the bear behaviour on display is fascinating. If you don't mind Treadwell's in-your-face style and his grisly fate (forgive the pun) it is worth watching.
+ Thanks to all of you who have sent us notes worrying about the wildfires and how they are impacting us. We are, thankfully, not affected.
I will never forget Apple. What a sweet bear she was. I think she was my first grizzly encounter which encouraged more trips to the wilderness. Since then I've had several close visits with bears, none of whom were aggressive, but I always give them the berth and respect that is proper. Another outcome of visiting Grizzly Bear Ranch was cultivating our steadfast friendship with Jules and Tim Dawson, with whom we still travel when time allows. Thank you for stirring those fond memories of our adventures at your ranch.
I’m proud to say we were among the many that had the pleasure and excitement to stay at your lodge.
Our first visit revealed not one single bear, but we returned the following fall to experience over thirty bears. I too have a picture of Apple and her cub on my den wall.
Thank you for an experience I will never forget.