Herd of Brown Bears Hobie Hare Photo Copyright 2025.
Brown Bear on the Beach Hobie Hare Photo Copyright 2025.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Erik and I recently returned from a ten-day escape to Alaska, including several days at a remote “Alaska Bear Camp” bordering four-million-acre Lake Clark National Park.
You have to take a short flight to get there (landing on and then taking off from the beach) or a four-to-five-hour, 55 mile often choppy boat ride from Homer to access one of America’s most remote national parks, which was established in 1980.
Base camp for four days was a private leased inholding on the West Cook Inlet coast that is entirely off the grid. We slept in wall tents equipped with propane heaters, airplane style privies, comfy beds, and other amenities.
Toiletries and anything with an odor were stored in a central dining area, which doubled as a place for presentations, announcements, happy half hours, and sharing wildlife sightings.
Flush toilets, modern sinks and showers were a short walk away, and with nearly 20 hours of functional daylight here in early June, we never needed to use a headlamp.
Surrounding our sleeping, cooking, dining and lavatory quarters was an electrified fence we were expected to remain within 24/7, unless accompanied by our guide or other camp field staff.
The fencing was not an impermeable barrier, but it deterred most brown bears and other critters from venturing within our critical habitat. One chilly morning, a red fox bounded into camp, then wriggled underneath the dining tent before racing on to its next destination.
Compared to the previous bear camp group, we had only a few inches of rain, mainly falling our first night there. We experienced unusually sunny and dry weather, and thankfully Alaska’s legendary mosquitoes and other biting insects were nearly nonexistent. One morning it dropped to 32 degrees, yet most days temperatures rebounded to the upper 50s and low 60s.
An observation deck awaited a few steps from our wall tent. There we enjoyed hanging out in different heated seating areas, one with clear awnings you could drop down to keep inclement winds and weather at bay, another one more exposed to the elements.
We moved the observation deck chairs around to strategic wildlife watching spots, using binoculars and spotting scopes to view brown bears, seals, sea otters, cormorants, bald eagles, surf scoters, and other critters.
Erik and I indeed lived in the sunshine and drank in the wild air in a place with one of the highest brown bear densities in the world. Every day we watched up to two dozen different brown bears, some of them females with cubs born this past winter, some with cubs born the winter before.
Brown bears and grizzly bears are the same species, Ursus arctos, but grizzly bears are regarded as a separate subspecies, Ursus arctos horribilis. In interior Alaska, brown bears are called grizzlies, as they are in their remaining habitat in the Lower 48.
Large brown bear populations throughout coastal Alaska exist due to abundant seasonal food sources they depend upon over the course of their lives, such as early summer clams and sedges to late summer berries and salmon runs. This also explains their immense size as adults-up to 1700 pounds for males, 700 pounds for females. A 1,700-pound male brown bear would likely be nine feet tall when standing on its feet.
As our group ventured to different viewing areas and platforms bordering Lake Clark National Park, we became more familiar with two brown bear families. They would dig for clams and take naps along the shore at low tide, and later in the day we’d see the same cubs wrestling together while their mothers ate sedges in the coastal wetlands. One evening a female with two cubs of the year briefly approached within 12 feet of us to avoid a much larger male brown bear nearby, and thankfully he remained even farther away.
Our guide prepared us thoroughly for what to do in such encounters. The goal was to remain close together as a group to appear as one large organism, with no gaps between us (for that’s where brown bears may run if there are large spaces between people!).
Having lived, recreated and guided in the Lower 48 in places where grizzlies still roam, I wasn’t used to being so physically close to them, but coastal Alaskan brown bears in protected areas appear to sense we’re not a significant threat, provided we consistently act and behave in non-threatening ways. Back home in the Northern Rockies though, I’ll revert to a different set of protocols I have practiced for decades while recreating and guiding others in grizzly and black bear country.
It was humbling visiting a place where I was not anywhere near the top of the food chain, and I was grateful for the abundant food sources and wild habitat these opportunistic omnivores rely upon over the course of their lives.
Coming back “Outside” (as Alaskans refer to the lower contiguous 48 U.S. states) this time has a palpably different feel and vibe as we settle into being home again. The call of the wild runs deeper and stronger now. Bear Camp time left indelible impressions and memories in my heart and mind, and I sense there’s way more to digest, process and learn from this adventure and experience.
Time there also re-invigorated how vital it is to become a stronger guardian and advocate for wild places and bear witness to our changing world, even when things appear to be dark, chaotic or both.
In Amy Martin’s “Threshold” podcast series on North American bison, she recounted that in the 1860s and 1870s increasing numbers of Americans grew concerned that the intertwined lives of bison and Plains Indians were rapidly disappearing.
They had a window to stop or reverse this, but the slaughter of bison continued, along with the forceful removal of Native Americans to reservations. Action to save the bison was finally taken in the 1890s, when the last two dozen or so remaining wild animals in Yellowstone were protected, otherwise obliterated from landscapes where 30 to 60 million of them ranged in their heyday.
In Alaska and other remaining wild places, we have a window and obligation to stop today’s accelerated environmental destruction, to preserve and protect what otherwise will be lost, to reverse the impacts of climate change.
No matter where we live, it’s time to re-evaluate our consumption of resources and products extracted and built in places that are other people’s homes, to more consciously connect the dots how our actions impact other human beings and their environments thousands of miles away.
Wild Alaska, the Arctic, the Amazon and other places should be hands off to short-sighted extractive activity that irreparably harms the people who live there, and the intact yet vulnerable ecosystems they depend upon.
In financial terms, over half the planet’s economic output, more than $125 trillion U.S. annually, depends on nature. More than half the global GDP is moderately to highly dependent on nature and its services.
Research from Zero Carbon Analytics indicates that “Nature adds ‘free’ value to society by providing essential ecosystem services that support life and economic activity without direct costs.”
Amy Martin’s observation that “proximity changes your perspective” rings true for me from visiting vastly different Alaskan ecosystems over the past 20 years, all dwarfing Greater Yellowstone in size, scale, healthy wildlife populations and wildland connectivity.
It has also deepened many connections-with wild places, new and renewed friendships, the kinship all beings share, and an enduring obligation with future generations, who hopefully will look back with gratitude for all we did to bring forth positive planetary change.
No matter where your feet are, it is time to take action.
It is time to move beyond overwhelm and despair.
One place to start is by doing easy joyful things to take greater care of one small part of the planet.
You don’t have to take on the whole world-start by doing something to beautify and uplift your home, your yard, your neighborhood.
Encourage others to do the same.
Enthusiasm, hope, love and joy are contagious and help shine a powerful light on what is possible.
We are all earth keepers and guardians, and now is our time, more than ever.
That’s what the brown bears showed me.
