The nine-hour Aeroflot flight from Moscow got me into Petropavlovsk at noon on September 23, a Saturday. My flight onward to Canada wasn’t until Monday. In my two-week absence from Kamchatka, summer had turned to fall. The leaves on the stone birch trees were golden; the air was crisp. I stood on the tarmac, dizzy with jet lag, but the calm air and the clear sky spoke to me through my fatigue. It was flying weather.
I jumped on a bus, and went out to Nicolayevka to see if my Kolb had been put away for the winter. It had not. A couple of my flying-school friends were there, and I asked if anyone knew where I could find a tank and two jerry can’s worth of decent Russian gas. Volodya said he had found a place that sold the best gas he’d used in five years. I left him my two jerry cans and a handful of rubles, and he said the gas would be waiting for me next morning.
I spent the night at Jennya’s apartment. She was still in Moscow, defending her doctoral dissertation, but the next morning, her son Misha made me a very early breakfast. I shouldered my pack full of survival gear and got back on the bus for the thirty-mile ride to the flying school. There was still a heavy frost on the ground when I got there, which was what I needed to take off. I pivoted my aircraft so that the rising sun could melt the ice off the wings.
At a quarter to ten, I was ready to “hand-prop” the plane. For the last half of the summer, I had been nursing an old and failing battery. Yesterday, the on-board computer had told me it was flat. My plan was to start the plane by hand-flipping the propeller. If I could do it now with the motor as cold as it was, I reckoned I could do it throughout the day.
Though I just about took the ends off my fingers on some stainless steel tape, the motor caught on the third try. I begged a couple of bandages and was in the air by ten. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen. With my flight to Canada leaving the next day, I knew I was taking a risk. But the urge to fly, to go south one more time before the close of the year, was much stronger than common sense.
Whether I would have taken this chance had Chico been around for a farewell two weeks ago is a good question. I felt very much like a father would—or in bear terms, a mother. My bear-child, now almost adult, had left home. I was worried for her safety. I was lonely for her company. Chico and I were as good friends as perhaps a person can be with a wild animal, and I yearned to see her again and to know for sure, going into winter, that she was okay.
I flew the familiar country, the valleys, ridges, and mountains—a living map that I could easily read. The tundra was its richest colour, gold and the red-scarlet of bearberry leaves. When it came time to transfer gas from the jerry can to the tank, I was near the Ksudach Volcano, so I lowered into its crater mouth and landed in a thermal-heated bay of the upper lake. I took off my shoes and socks and stood in the hot water while I poured gas, dreaming of what I didn’t have time for today: a dip in the hot water, and sleeping on the hot sand without need of a sleeping bag. The Kolb started without any problem, and soon I was dropping over the final pass into the Kambalnoye basin.
Descending, I could see that the pine nuts must be ripe in their cones and plentiful. Wherever there were mats of wind-dwarfed pine trees, there were bears. In my wishful condition, I was seeing Chico, fat with salmon, bushy with new hair, in too many places. I even landed on a little mirror lake because I was so sure I’d found her. I walked to the place, and it was a different bear.
In making that landing, I created my first flying problem of the day. I needed a beach to run up on so the plane would stay stationary when I turned the propeller. On the water, the second it was propped, the plane would pull itself ahead with me outside. The problem here was there was no beach, just a ring of overhanging alder.
My solution was to tie a rope to the frame and wedge it between a pair of rocks. It would hold the plane long enough for me to get inside. When I put on full throttle, the power would pull the rope free. With the rope trailing in the air, I flew the last mile home.
On the ground, I studied the bears that I could see with the naked eye and with binoculars. Most were seated in pine thickets, munching the sides out of cones. No Biscuit. No Chico. I had done such a thorough job of poacher-proofing the cabin it took me a whole half hour to get inside, where a jerry can of gas I needed in order to get back was stashed.
Then I went for a long walk to all the places where I thought it likely that Chico and Biscuit would go for their own harvest of pine nuts. Again and again I called their names in the voice that was our shared language. I saw many bears, but Chico and Biscuit weren’t among them.
I had given myself until 4:30. The days were shorter now, and I couldn’t stay much beyond that without risking darkness at the other end. I couldn’t believe how fast my watch wound around to that time. I was back near the cabin and prepping the Kolb for takeoff, when above the cliff in Bearskull Bay, Biscuit wandered into view.
I walked up to where she was and I could hardly believe how big and fat she’d become. She had gained at least a hundred pounds in two and a half weeks. She had been sleeping and her eyes would not quite wake up. She was in that final lazy stage before a bear digs her den and goes for the long snooze, and she looked great with her long, beautiful blond fur.
Together, we walked the creek for a while. I still kept hoping that Chico would make an appearance as Biscuit had done. But by five o’clock, it hadn’t happened, and I was really out of time. I think I knew that Chico wasn’t there to be found, but it was also impossible to give up hoping that the next few steps would reveal her. For the second time that fall, Biscuit and I said our goodbyes.
It was a melancholy flight back to Petropavlovsk, though sweeter than if Biscuit hadn’t shown up to see me off. The gold and red scenery unfolded in reverse, and I wondered, almost until I ached, where Chico was. How had the voyage into new country gone for her? Was she strong and forceful enough to hold her own, or was she having to use her speed and wiles to flee the territory of older, bigger bears? Would she return to Kambalnoye Lake to den, and would she be there waiting for us, as in any other year, when Maureen and I returned?
It seemed likely that she would return, that a lifetime of learning every cliff ledge and creek shallow would be too much advantage to simply walk away from. I dreamt that she would choose to breed and bring forth young in the places she knew best. I also knew she would be learning the advantages of other places that might be safer for her cubs.
That I did not know any of this for sure was not just frustrating for me; it was also quite wonderful. My not knowing didn’t mean that Chico was becoming unpredictable; it just meant that I didn’t yet know how to read the subtle logic of landscape and instinct that would rule her and Biscuit as adults.
Within that thought was the most important thing we had accomplished here at Kambalnoye. With the always sensible and patient help of Chico, Biscuit, and Rosie, Maureen and I had proven that the problems between people and bears are not rooted inside bears. If we choose to make ourselves better neighbours, wild bears can be counted on to behave within the ancient code of their wild culture.
As for our Kamchatka bear project, Maureen and I were confident we would enter year six with the usual mix of excitement, suspense, and expectation. The Russians would likely continue to torment us with bureaucracy while being our allies in ways that no North American jurisdiction probably ever would. We owed a tremendous amount to the Russians, without whose curious patience and willingness we would never have even met our three bears, let alone had the honour of raising them and helping them be wild.
If I had any qualm about my end of the project, it was that I might have failed our bears in the way that humans have always failed bears: by not trusting them as far as they could be, and may even want to be, trusted. Chico had often walked up to me with her eyes alight with goofy, infectious joy, wanting me to come and play some new game that would deepen our friendship. I always gave her a shove away, then stood up to show there was a limit to what I would do. She looked at me with such disappointment. If she had words, I think she would have said, “When have I ever hurt you?”
And it’s true—she never has.
Maureen will say that she has never seen me afraid in the presence of a bear, but the ancient fear of bear is in me too. And so there is something left for me to do.
NOTE FOR THE 2003 EDITION
Since the writing and first publication of this book, Maureen and I have continued to go back to Kamchatka to build on our incredible experience. It’s not likely that we’ll be able to repeat such a study, so we want to continue as long as we can. Each year seems to get more interesting. Brandy will soon wean Lemon and Lime, another set of cubs she has raised and has entrusted to us when she has needed time to herself. And our ranger program has worked wonderfully for five years now, protecting both the bears and the salmon as we had hoped it would.
Although we have not seen Chico again, we have no reason to think she is not alive—other than it seems strange to us that she would not somehow keep in touch. As we learn how young bears disperse and claim far-reaching territories, we feel lucky that Biscuit has made her home at Kambalnoye. She was bred by two different males in June 2002 and will come out of her den with cubs in the spring of 2003. We will be there again to see what delights are in store for us as grandparents.
