Though I’ve told of some life-threatening hikes, there were hundreds of wonderful ones I’ve not described, covering thousands of miles of adventure, beauty, and deepening kinship with the world. To represent all of them, I’ll share one grizzly bear story.
Grizzlies are part of hiking in Denali because we are hiking through their home. On some hikes I saw none; on one hike I saw nineteen (many a mile or so away, but still…). This particular time, a mid-July heat wave oppressed the land. I struggled hot and miserable through the heat over a low divide and headed west down a gentle drainage that stretched straight towards the Toklat River. The land was low tundra; I could see for several miles. In the distance, perhaps a mile away, a solitary grizzly was coming up the drainage. He was still far enough away that I wasn’t concerned; the land was open enough that I would have plenty of room to give a wide berth around the bear, so I continued on down the drainage, keeping watch with my binoculars.
As I drew nearer, I could see that he was obviously miserable. Imagine wearing a thick bear rug you can’t take off during a heat wave! He was staggering through the heat, his lolling head swaying back and forth. I decided it was basic courtesy for me to go wide around him so I moved over onto the right-hand slope of the drainage.
As we drew closer, he headed for a small drainage coming in on the left. A small divide, perhaps ten feet high, separated that tributary drainage from the main one. A snowbank was draped over that divide. The grizzly bear labored up the divide to the middle of that snowbank and just dropped, belly flat against the snow, left legs on one side of the divide, right legs on the other, head, throat down on the snow – a full-body embrace of its coolness. Relief! I continued on down to the Toklat. From miles away, I could look back through my binoculars and see him – unmoving brother bear – sprawled on that mercifully cold snowbank.
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