Baby Bear!

Hey family and friends! I'm posting this one a month later, but it sure is fun to remember all these adventures.

Mid September, before Stanford started the Fall quarter, David Johnson came out to visit, and so I asked Tyler if he could take us out on an Alaskan adventure. Boy, did we get one. Watch-out world, because Eileen drove her first boat, saw her first bear, and bear-hand-caught her first fish.

We launched out in Tyler's skiff from Crescent Harbor into the cold rain and wind of Sitka Sound, heading South to the Medvidjie Hatchery. To my surprise, Tyler offered me the driver's seat, and taught me how to listen to the sound of the motor to optimize the speed and fuel efficiency of the skiff. Driving the boat was pretty cool. I had to steer around a log at one point, and slow down to see a rock cave in an inlet, and then even back up the skiff! That was exciting. :)
The clouds were enchantingly low that afternoon, and the Medvidjie inlet had an ethereal mist covering it as we boated up to the Hatchery. Not only did it look mysterious, but what a hatchery really is was a mystery to me as well. Fortunately Tyler had worked there for a summer and was able to explain it to David and me : Salmon are spawned and born in rivers, swim out to the ocean as small fry, spend 2-3 years wild in the ocean, and then swim back to the same exact river to die. Hatcheries sit at the mouth of the river, catch the salmon when they return, harvesting their eggs and sperm. Then they fertilize and nurture enough to send out more small fry into the wild, and make a profit from selling the rest to countries in Asia that appreciate the delicacy of salmon roe.

But back to our adventure. Tyler docked the skiff and as we climbed onto the steel dock, one of the guys noticed the baby bear eating fish on the shore. A baby bear! I couldn't believe it. It was about knee-high lumbering around, but when it stood up to follow a smell, or bat at the fish caught in the nets keeping non salmon out of the hatchery, it was just a little shorter than me. Because of the large nets between us and the bear, it felt a little bit like the zoo, except that the nets weren't actually preventing the bear from coming at us, and there was a wilderness containing the baby bear's large protective mother behind him. That made me a little nervous, because being between a baby cub and its mother would be about the only way three or more people have ever been attacked by a bear, but Tyler had a gun, and we had a plan to hike up to the lake, so off we went, into the brush! I made sure to keep David and Tyler talking the whole hike. I wanted that momma bear (whose foot prints we found on the trail) to know there were three of us. Crossing a rushing stream by log Nastia Liukin style (well, minus the flips and cartwheels), crawling under logs across the trail, hopping over logs and scrambling around boulders, my heart stopping when Tyler stopped suddenly and said "Look!" I was so sure it was a bear, and we were going to die, but he was simply pointing out a fallen tree across the river. So the hike kept me on my toes.

The lake we hiked to was one of the most serene places I have ever been. The water was clear, still, and a light green. The mountains and valley on the far end of the lake were obscured by the beautiful mist and fog, broken only by the the tips of lacy pine. I could have sat by that lake for hours contemplating, but we had to jet back to beat the sunset.

The peaceful lake must have calmed my bear paranoia, and I was much less jumpy on the hike back. When we reached the mouth of the river where the Hatchery sits, the baby bear had lumbered off and we got a great view of the salmon (if I remember correctly, dog salmon?) jumping like mad to get up the stream. The tragedy is the only way up is in a shoot, and the mouth of the true river is blocked, leaving some salmon jumping/flopping in vain up against the dam. What would an Alaskan do? (WWAD?) That's right, go bear hand catch one of those suckers! David and I had fun clomping into the shallow river bed sending them flopping furiously away from us. Their fins and mouths looked suprisingly sharp that close up, but after a few hesitant attempts I went for it and wrapped my hand around a muscular tail. I couldn't believe how strong it felt, arching left and right, left and right. I couldn't hold it for long, but I thought of the local boy that asked me if I wanted to go fishing earlier that month, and had to smile.

So David got to experience some true Southeast Alaskan adventures. Stephen's coming to visit next month, hopefully we'll get out and have more adventures when he comes to visit as well!