On June 24, Maureen arrived to meet me in PK, exhausted but glad to be back in Kamchatka. She had been able to get another digital camera and had with her all the components of the travelling art exhibition slated for Moscow in September. Three days later, on June 25, I flew south in the Kolb and Maureen followed by helicopter.
The bears weren’t around when we got to Kambalnoye Lake, and the weather was deteriorating fast. We had two extra people aboard the helicopter to help carry our two tons of gear and supplies to the cabin, but the ground was soggy and the load had to be dumped hurriedly while the pilot held some of the weight off the ground. Then the pilot and all the crew flew away, leaving Maureen and me alone to get everything under cover.
Before we knew it, we were into a gruelling five-day storm. As we sat it out, we experienced more than the average amount of frustration. Maureen hadn’t seen the bears yet, and I couldn’t fly. While in PK, I’d been told about two whales washed up on the southwest coast of Kamchatka, one south of Ozernovskiy and the other only a mile south of the mouth of Kambalnoye River. This one, the closer one, was said to be a blue whale. I know a beached whale may not sound like something most people would want to see, but I had never seen a blue whale, dead or alive. An average blue whale is seventy to eighty feet long and weighs around 100 tons, with a really large one weighing 150 tons. I wanted to see what happened when such a huge food source arrived for the bears, virtually overnight. It was only ten miles away but the weather was keeping me from it.
MAUREEN: Finally the weather did clear and Charlie and I were able to hike into Chico Basin. We had spotted Chico and Biscuit grazing on some lush new green at the top of the basin the night before. I came over a small hill and, suddenly, there were both bears ahead of me. I called out the now ridiculous greeting, “Hey, little bears!” and they both looked up from their feeding and watched with interest as we came forward. I set my pack down and Biscuit nuzzled it. Then she put her face up, inviting me to touch noses with her, the intimate greeting between bears. Her face was so huge now. I brought my face to within a foot of hers and we stared into each other’s eyes for awhile. Her gentle, gentle eyes. She seemed happy with that. The two bears felt very much like family to me. I was delighted to be with them again.
That summer had the worst weather of them all, including our first. I won’t say Maureen and I were becoming cheerfully indifferent to bad weather, but we were certainly much more adept at ignoring it. Often, we would strike off into the wet, unless the fog was so dense that we were afraid we’d abruptly pop into visibility and scare the bears.
When the first storm let up on July 3, I jumped into the Kolb and flew to the coast. I found the enormous blue whale, but it was in a precarious place where I could not land. There were bears on it, and I watched for some time from the air. I left sooner than I wanted to for fear I would scare them away.
The weather stayed sour, and the next time I made it back was on July 5. I counted a dozen bears feeding on the carcass. Again, I couldn’t land.
The weather got even more miserable after that, and it wasn’t until July 13 that I returned again. The bad weather had broken the blue whale apart. I headed up to the second whale near Ozernovskiy, which turned out to be a fin whale about sixty-five feet long. Caught in the rocks below a set of cliffs, where the waves had been smashing at it for weeks, it was also broken up. There were no bears, probably because the salmon had arrived in the creeks and rivers by this time. The area was also poaching country. Bill Leacock later told me of finding two slaughtered bears not far from there, both with their stomachs full of blubber.
On the July 5 trip, although I could not land near the blue whale, I was able to land above the Kambalnoye River mouth and check out the cabin the anti-poaching fund had paid to refurbish into a ranger’s cabin. Two men were living there, a fairly rough-looking but pleasant father and son. The father, Nikolai, and the boy, Sasha, invited me in for tea. Though we didn’t have a lot of verbal currency between us, they managed to convey that they had spent the winter here. I asked if they had been up to Kambalnoye Lake and Sasha readily told me that he had gone up with a snow machine and stayed for a while around April 4. When I left, Sasha gave me a little tea strainer, which I recognized as ours. In a demonstration of honesty, he told me to give it to my wife.
Back at Kambalnoye, Maureen had been touring the lake in her kayak and had scouted out many of the trends in our end of the basin. The big news was that Brandy had weaned Gin and Tonic, and was in breeding mode with a big male. To wean her cubs, she would run them off, but not too far. Then she would stay within a certain distance of them to make sure they were all right. Gin and Tonic hung around for the duration of the breeding, hoping to be accepted back when it was over.
While breeding and weaning, Brandy managed to continue her turf war with our cubs—mainly with Chico. One day, we watched Chico lead Brandy on an impressively long chase up and down a snowy mountainside. That evening, Brandy, Chico, and Biscuit all grazed the same basin, apparently at peace.
A couple of days later, Maureen and I were watching Chico and Biscuit grazing in a small coulee not far from Gin and Tonic. Coming from downwind, and not visible to Chico or Biscuit, Brandy came creeping through the alders. We didn’t know how serious this territorial battle might get and felt increasingly uneasy. Finally, she was no more than thirty feet away, still undetected. She could have easily pounced on one of them, but what she did instead was step out and stare at them. She waited for them to feel her presence and to start to run. Only then did she give chase, pursuing them into the alder thicket.
When we next caught sight of them, it was near the lakeshore. Brandy was hard on Biscuit’s heels. We didn’t like what might happen if Biscuit lost the race. Chico came into view on a cliff above Gin and Tonic, and the three of them stood and watched. Biscuit had a good lead by the time she reached the cliffs. She and Chico had used these cliffs as a refuge when they were small, but she had lost the manoeuvring advantage of a cub. Awkwardly, Biscuit climbed to the top of the steepest part anyway. Brandy climbed up even higher and approached from above. Then Biscuit took a step towards Brandy, stretched up, and roared in the older bear’s face. Their heads were inches apart, their jaws fully open.
We were nervous about the precarious footing. If either slipped, they could easily fall 200 feet. Then Brandy stepped back and walked away slowly. Biscuit found a more secure spot to stand, ate a few greens on a ledge and fell asleep. In the spot from which she had watched it all, Chico had a nap as well. Just before dark, we saw Biscuit heading south in the direction of Itelman Bay. She had left her sister behind.
We wondered that night if Biscuit might be hurt, and we went out early in the morning to look for her. Chico saw us coming and walked with us. Maureen went ahead as we approached Itelman Bay, calling. Biscuit finally emerged from the alder above us. She was fine.
Chico and Biscuit moved towards each other, rubbed heads and touched noses. Chico rolled in Biscuit’s scent in the snow. The cubs were doing exactly what they did when they met us after a separation, and of course it made perfect sense. It was just that we had not seen it before. As long as the cubs had been inseparable, it never happened. Now that they were more independent, it did. Maureen could see a change in Biscuit’s face—something of the cub had left it. More confidence had emerged.
My interpretation of the squabble between Brandy and Chico and Biscuit was that Brandy wanted to have that end of the valley to herself, especially during the low-food time of early spring. When food became more plentiful, during the salmon and pine nut seasons, she seemed more at ease.
The other change that Maureen and I noticed that summer was that there were no foxes. This was sad for both of us but more for Maureen, who had spent a lot of time getting to know the three fox families and individuals like Squint. Now, they simply weren’t there, and neither of us could come up with a reason.
That rainy July, I rigged up a windmill. The stormy weather interfered with our power supply and our ability to contact the outside world. Wind, unlike sunlight, was never in short supply. The windmill was an immediate and lasting success. We were never short of power again.
When the weather started to improve around the end of the month, I got out and did more flying. I took some plankton samples for Katya, and, flying them over to her, I saw that the sockeye salmon numbers were much higher than in a normal year. I took a spin down the river where the run of pinks entering the river was massive, the most I’d ever seen. Chico and Biscuit were destined for a feast. Something else that I noticed from the air were two female bears with four cubs each.
While I was at Kurilskoy, I went over to visit with the rangers at the new cabin. It was there I learned the startling truth about the “rangers” I had visited at the Kambalnoye River mouth. Nikolai and Sasha weren’t rangers at all, but trappers who had been told they could use the cabin for the winter. Because the Sanctuary could not afford an actual ranger to live there in the winter, despite our funding, the two trappers were theoretically better than nothing. As payment for protecting the cabin and its contents throughout the harsh winter, they were granted permission to trap foxes.
Sasha had been quite open about his use of our cabin, as well as the ranger cabin, and it probably never occurred to him that we would be upset if he trapped the foxes there, since our interest was bears. As well, he probably didn’t see his deal with the authorities as any of our business. It was a ridiculous situation. Even if I bought the logic, it still didn’t explain why the trappers had stayed on into summer. Bill, Maureen, and I had raised the funds for the refurbishment of that cabin so it could be used by rangers, not trappers.
Whatever fuss I raised about this at Kurilskoy was absolutely meek compared to the conflagration when I told Maureen what had happened to her foxes. She was very close to marching down the river and settling the score with the trappers herself. She had loved those foxes and couldn’t bear to think of what had happened to them.
I didn’t like it either, but I knew that it wasn’t really Nikolai and Sasha’s fault. They did what they were told they could do. It was just one of those frustrating things that happen in Russia, and as usual, the cause was money, or rather the insufficiency of it. I vowed that before I left that year, I would get together with the people in charge and hash out a deal whereby real rangers could be posted to all the cabins for the winter. We would find the money to pay for it, somehow.
In early August, I went back and visited the blue whale one more time. By now, the wind and the weather and the bears and the ravens had picked the whale clean. I was able to land this time, and I walked the length of the vast skeleton. The skull alone was fifteen feet long. I picked up a vertebra, which I later weighed at fifty-two pounds. The fins of the vertebra were so wide that, in order to fly home with it, I had to stick one side in the small of my back while the other held the passenger door open. I wanted to show it to Maureen, and to Chico and Biscuit.
The whale vertebra was a huge success with the bears. They studied it intently. It was pretty smelly, and I stored it on the roof of the outdoor toilet, which was inside an electric fence. When the bears were around camp, Chico especially used to stare at the vertebra wistfully, the great smelly prize of it.
Since Chico and Biscuit were now approaching four, and both weighed at least 400 pounds, everything we did with them had more significance scientifically than it had earlier in their lives. The doubters had predicted that the bears would turn on us when they were yearlings. Others said it would be as late as age two or three. The bears were beyond all those predictions now, and the trust between them and Maureen and me stood fast. Because we were now into the zone of the supposedly impossible, I felt I should widen and deepen that trust, and test it as much as I could. Though Biscuit and I certainly trusted each other, I chose Chico for most of these experiments. She was the one who always seemed to want to go further in our friendship than I had allowed to date.
One of those experiments happened on August 4. I had carried the pails over to Char Creek to get water and, when I got there, I set them down and hiked along the creek a ways. When I got to where the stream began to wind lazily across a meadow before falling into the lake, I saw Chico enter the canyon upstream and lie down on a grassy bench with her paws hanging over the edge. Biscuit was not with her. They had split up for the day to investigate different stretches of shoreline. Chico stayed where she was, watching me intently.
I knew what she was waiting for. She wanted me to look for some salmon, which sometimes enter the creek from the lake. There weren’t a lot of fish available yet to Chico that season, and she had decided to save her energy—unless I signalled that I had found something worth her while. I looked around and spotted a large male salmon, about ten pounds. The fish was half-spent, and, though currently in deep water where Chico would have trouble landing it, it was headed into a shallower stretch. Chico was about 200 yards away, still on her perch, still staring at me.
When the salmon moved into water only a foot deep, I raised my hand. Chico leapt up, ran down the slope, and came across the flat like an express train, straight at me. Anyone watching would have thought I was experiencing the last seconds of my life. Chico had her ears up and her mouth partway open. Her look was very intense. When she was within twenty feet, I concentrated very hard on the salmon so she would know where to look. She skidded to a stop beside me, and I pointed at the salmon, which had a convenient white patch on its back where some skin was already dying.
As soon as Chico saw the fish, she leapt into the creek. In three bounds, she belly-flopped on top of it. The salmon must have squirted out from under her, and with the silt all stirred up she lost track of it. From high on the bank, I spotted it heading down stream. I ran along the top after it. When I was opposite the fish again, I pointed. Chico came bounding down the middle of the creek until she saw it too, then took another mighty leap and caught it.
Chico brought the salmon to where I stood and I praised her. It’s hard to describe the look Chico gave me right then. I have come to know it as an appreciation of something I have done. She was proud of our teamwork, and so was I.
Later, I found a dead salmon on the beach. I called her. She came pounding down the shore, right at me as usual. This time, I picked up the dead fish and waited for her. When she saw that it was dead and that I was holding it, she slowed and sauntered up to me, then carefully took it from my hand.
In all these things, there was a method that I had been evolving. Bears are very serious about finding food in the half of their life when they’re not asleep. The intensity of that seriousness rises as the season grows late and they know they have to pack on weight for winter. They won’t tolerate interference in that pursuit of food, but, by the same token, because they trusted us, our bears welcomed our assistance if we chose to give it, and if it was genuine assistance. Each time we helped them, it made the trust between us stronger.
It is important to say that I was not really doing anything for Chico that she badly needed. She would have found those fish on her own; her survival was not influenced by anything I did. Chico only relied on me when I indicated to her that I wanted to team up and help. Otherwise, she demanded nothing.
Not long after that fishing expedition, Maureen and I saw that the massive runs of pinks and sockeye were choking the river. There were huge numbers of them just below the lake. Because Chico and Biscuit were still patrolling the lake edge looking for dead sockeye, and because they never went below the place where the river drains the lake, we decided to see if we could take them there. I called Chico, and Biscuit decided she wanted to come too.
We led them to the lake’s outflow, and, from that mouth, they could see the salmon teeming below. But it wasn’t a good fishing place for them. Their enthusiasm to find where this rush of fish was coming from led them farther down, to a place where the water was shallower. When they realized what a bonanza we had shown them, they were beside themselves with joy. Chico was shaking with excitement. These were not the spawned-out weaklings they were used to in the lake and Char Creek, but a big, strong batch of sockeye intent on going forward. The bottom of the river was stony and jagged with no stretches of sand between the stones. In short, it was hard fishing, but plentiful too. It was a real circus of flying water and leaping salmon. At one point, Chico was so excited she suddenly jumped up on the small rock I was standing on. I am still puzzled about why. There was no room for us both, and she curled her forepaw completely around my legs and hugged them. Any bump and I would have been off the rock and into the boulders. I try to stay calm in those kinds of situations, but finally I had to yell “Chico!” She carefully unwrapped her paw from around me and plopped back into the water. I’m pretty sure she was trying to thank me for the good fishing spot.
In four years, we had seen our bears near this section of river only once. We had never seen Brandy here. It shows how rigidly their sense of territory is defined. Interestingly, once Chico found this place, she would not leave, perhaps having added it to her home range. But after that first day below the lake, Biscuit went back to Char Creek, where she and Brandy were soon gorging on pinks, with not the slightest sign of wariness between them.
The fact that Chico wouldn’t leave the new fishing hole led to our next adventure together. I was beginning to wonder if I had done her any favours. The main surge of salmon had by now passed into the lake, and Chico’s feet were getting awfully sore from plunging and running on the jagged rocks. Brandy and Biscuit were having a much better time of it on Char Creek, so I decided to try to lead Chico there.
I have a special way of calling Chico’s name when I really want her to pay attention. When I found her at her fishing hole, I used that call and suggested she follow me. It took two false starts before she figured out I was serious and came along. We had about two miles to go, and it was by far shorter to leave the river and cut across the tundra. At one point, I had to crawl on my hands and knees through some really twisted and bent-over alder, and Chico was right behind me, her big canines not a foot from my butt. I decided, given Chico’s sudden urges to playfulness, this was trust carried too far. I rolled aside and asked her to take the lead. She stepped over my legs, then rushed through to the clearing ahead. There she waited for me to extricate myself. We continued across the tundra.
Chico was starting to get charged up. She trusted me not to lead her this far unless there was something really good ahead. She couldn’t stand the suspense and rushed off ahead several times towards the lakeshore or a creek. Each time, I called her back and we continued. Finally, we came to the stream that was full of pinks. Chico could see them, but the water was deep and I asked her to come with me farther upstream. We continued to where a shallow riffle was loaded with spawning fish. Chico’s ears were up, and she was looking at me with that wonderful “What a friend!” expression. Then she jumped in and began her feast. Before I left I watched her eat six salmon in a matter of minutes.
Making Chico understand the difference between serious food-finding and play did cause a few tense moments. On the rare occasions when it was calm and clear for several days in a row, the small lake north of the cabin would warm up enough to swim. Maureen and I used these occurrences as opportunities to bathe. It was inevitable that one day Chico and Biscuit would come along to investigate. When it finally did happen, Maureen was on shore and I was in the water. I called to Chico and I’m sure she thought I had spotted a fish for her. In a few big bounds, she made it into the deep water and started swimming straight for me. I must confess my nakedness made me feel very vulnerable, especially when she got within a few yards and put her face underwater. She was looking for the dead salmon she expected to be on the lake bottom beneath me. What she saw were my white feet treading water, and, for a moment, she must have thought they were the fish I had called her about. Luckily for me, as she lunged forward her visibility improved enough that she saw my feet as feet. She calmed down and we swam together across the lake. I was lucky enough to swim with both cubs once, later that year.
This trust was not exclusive to our relationship with Chico and Biscuit. It existed with other bears, most notably Brandy, but also her cubs, Gin and Tonic, who continued to trust us after they were weaned. The male we called Walnut, whom we had met in 1998 during Mike McIntosh and Margaret Horne’s visit, also trusted us, even though he only visited the area every August. Because of the difference in the kind of relationship we had with these other bears, the trust was expressed at a slightly greater remove, which allowed us to share the same area without being distracted by one another’s activities. This was the level of trust I felt could realistically be achieved between people and bears who needed to share any area of mutual interest.
In late August, when the pinks were still spawning in the creek above the cabin, Brandy was catching them among the big boulders in the canyon. I was walking upstream and went right up to a little waterfall without realizing that Brandy had wedged herself into the rocks there. She was right under the waterfall, with just a little of her bum showing. I didn’t notice and was only a few feet away when she suddenly backed out. We surprised each other completely. The sudden sizzle of fear at the sight of the bear so close and backing right at me dissipated when I recognized Brandy. I could tell that the same up-and-down pattern of emotion was happening in her. She took a deep breath and resumed fishing.
That this was not a blanket trust, bestowed on all humans, was illustrated one day when I flew Bill in from Kurilskoy for a visit. Maureen and I took him on a walk that led to Brandy. Brandy was fishing, and she wouldn’t let us get within forty yards of her. If we tried to come any closer, she would leave the creek. Obviously, she did not trust the stranger. Bill was only there for the day so we couldn’t experiment to see how long it would take for her to gain some trust with him.
MAUREEN: In mid-August that year, Biscuit and I were walking down the creek from the upper canyon, nearing a bend where the creek enters a second, lower canyon. Biscuit was on the other side of the creek from me, and I could see, before Biscuit could, that Brandy had emerged from the lower canyon and was heading up on Biscuit’s side. Biscuit was intent on her fishing and didn’t see Brandy until she was just fifty feet away. Biscuit glanced at me, then turned and walked upriver. I thought Brandy would chase Biscuit, but she didn’t. I lost track of Biscuit for a little while in the tall grass, and I watched Brandy fish her way along the stream until she and I were opposite each other. Just then, I realized that Biscuit was back at my side. She was looking back and forth from Brandy to me and making the chuffing sound that is a bear’s way of warning another bear of danger. I talked to Brandy then, and Biscuit walked away out onto the tundra, but not far. Biscuit looked worried, and she kept on looking at me, looking at Brandy, and chuffing.
I can’t be certain that Biscuit was trying to get me to follow her away from Brandy, but I’m fairly sure that was her intention. I don’t think she could understand the trust Charlie and I had with this bear who was her competitor. When I finally turned northward and walked away from Brandy, Biscuit walked parallel to me out on the tundra. Finally satisfied that I was on my way, she went out farther onto the tundra and had a rest.
August 25 wound up being a major day in the life of our project, though we didn’t know it at the time. We noticed that Chico was gone and that Biscuit was upset and looking for her. But that was all. The bears were quite independent of one another by then, and often split up for the day to fish. But Biscuit did seem worried.
A few days later, Chico still had not returned. Biscuit continued to look around and sniff the air. She could not seem to figure out where her sibling had gone. We could see that the bears were in a migration to the east, flowing over the mountain and probably headed for the coast. These kinds of migrations happened every year, but our bears had never been tempted to go along. Now, it seemed that whatever was on the wind had enticed Chico away. As the days whittled down between the time of her disappearance and the time of our scheduled departure, we began to realize that we might not see her again that year.