![]() They looked younger than their ages, and increasingly they looked alike: lean, fit, beach-blond. The golden couple, Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, lived by bears and died by bears. It was October in Alaska, and he was a bear. At this point, instinct took over and everything became a blur. He stood upright, inhaling the cold air, eyes straining to see. Inside their carefully constructed habitat, the golden pair stirred. Together they nested in a dense thicket of alders, near some of the age-old bear trails that crisscross Kaflia. Now, it seemed, the male had taken a mate, a small, pretty female. Capable of dragging a moose up a mountain and devouring it entirely, a grizzly eats whatever he wants, whenever he wants-including, at times, other grizzlies. It was a worship born of fear, since grizzlies are the world’s largest terrestrial predators, dominating the food chain with their power and size, speed and cunning. For centuries, local tribes saw them as gods or shamans. ![]() Known as Kodiaks, the bears on Kodiak Island are easily the world’s largest, standing upwards of 11 feet tall and weighing as much as 1,500 pounds-the size of three Bengal tigers, five mountain gorillas, or eight men.Įven those who shoot them agree that grizzlies are wonders to behold, possessed of uncommon beauty and human-like qualities that border on the mystical. Of the estimated 32,000 grizzlies left in the United States, around 31,000 live in Alaska, where they are, in more ways than one, larger than life. For centuries, this corner of the subarctic has been known as Grizzly Country. Even by his spotty hygienic standards-years in the Alaskan wilderness do that to you-he was filthy.īut especially the bears. His hair was icy, almost crystalline, and his coat was soaked. But with the gloom and the rain swirling in sheets, the water was gray, churning. Normally the water was so clear he could see straight to the rocky riverbed. Slate-gray storm clouds hung low over the bay. Only the stragglers remained here in Kaflia Bay, scrapping for what little food remained, hoping against hope that there was still a salmon or two in the creeks, or a few unpicked elderberries to be had somewhere between here and the mountains, among them a forbidding peak known as the Devil’s Desk. Then the creeks slowed, the salmon run thinned, and they were gone.Īs they did every October, the bears were heading deeper inland, toward their dark mountain lairs, where they would sleep through the long winter. ![]() Days earlier, the place had crawled with bears, splashing through the streams, flipping boulders like dice. Soon everyone would be gone for the year, even the grizzlies. Here he was alone but never lonely, didn’t even know what loneliness was. He lived way out here, where it was just him and Alaska and to hell with everyone else.
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