Into the lair of the white bear (page 2)
Striking out into the wilderness, I inhaled air filtered by millions
of conifers — 1,000-year-old red cedar, western hemlock,
Sitka spruce. A humpback whale raced along the coastline,
thumping its enormous tail. Four caramel-coloured sea lions
cavorted in the waters near shore. That night, a storm hit, lashing
our vessel. Secure in my bunk in the wheelhouse, I dreamt
of looking for a place I could not find. As dawn forced its way
through the morning mist, I awoke to discover that we had
anchored in a protected bay next to the rusted hull of a century-old
shipwreck. A reminder that for every island we pass, more
lurk just below the surface.
AFTER BREAKFAST, primed with steaming mugs of fair-trade
organic coffee, we board two inflatable Zodiacs and zip into
Mussel Inlet, where we immediately see signs of what our onboard
naturalist, Alison Watt, calls the “divine, spectacularly
mortal
salmon,” a line from Canadian poet Don McKay. In Bella
Bella, the fishing boats sit idle, hard hit by the decline in salmon
stocks. Out here, where the unruly Pacific laps up against the
mouths of rivers, some of these spectacularly mortal beings still
live out their primordial drama, growing snouts and fangs in
a Jekyll-to-Hyde transformation as they fight their way to a
redemptive death.
This place, explains Watt, should really be called the Great
Salmon Rainforest. Salmon are the foundational species that
supports bears, wolves, minks, eagles, ravens, all the way down
to what she calls the “non-charismatic microfauna,” a
sly comment
that exposes how obsessed we humans are with the big
and beautiful animals when the tiny and ignored are just as
essential. None matter more, though, than the salmon that
have journeyed to spawn and then die in the rivers where they
were born. Carried deep into the woods by all manner of creatures,
their bodies fertilize the soil with nitrogen, creating
growth bursts in trees, which in turn protect the rivers and the
salmon from runoff.
One snouted beast on the river’s edge has had his juicy eye
plucked out by an eagle or a raven or one of the thousands of
dovelike mew gulls that breed in Alaska and pause here on
their migration south. Others, half gutted, indicate the presence
of bears.
As we trudge through the sedges in rain gear, a black grizzly
rears up from the shoreline, its cavernous mouth chewing
silverweed root, its back a great muscular hump. A ways off, a
tawny-coloured grizzly mother and her nearly weaned cub are
sharing a salmon.
As wilderness disappears, so do the grizzlies, but that is not
the only risk to their survival. In a month or two, says our captain,
bear viewing will turn to the licensed bear hunt. This grizzly
mother and cub, part of a declining population that has
already disappeared from 99 percent of its habitat in the United
States and most of southern British Columbia, will be seen
through a rifle scope rather than a camera lens.
For now, they barrel awkwardly into the water for a fresh catch.
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