Driving: Bear Necessity

Toward the end of the Cassiar Highway, there's a 25-mile spur road that heads west over the Coast Mountains to the border of the Alaska Panhandle. One reason to take this detour is the string of stunning glaciers along the road, arrayed like jewels on a chain. Another, if you are so inclined, is Alaska's Tongass National Forest, whose rivers and creeks are the spawning ground for millions of Pacific salmon and, in late summer, an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet for the park's population of bears.

Whether I was so inclined shifted moment to moment, depending on whom I spoke to last. When I stopped at the visitors' information center to pick up a trail map, the woman behind the desk actually laughed out loud—"Do you know how many bears we've got this summer?"—and suggested we'd be better off going to have pizza. But when I asked a friendly (dare I say bearish-looking?) park ranger about the safety of hiking, his eyes lit up, and he directed us to an old dirt mining road, with instructions to follow it to the end, where we'd have good bear-visibility high above the trees. It appeared that the last words we might hear in this world would be his: "Have fun!"

Within a few miles, the dirt road began its steep ascent into the mountains. Up and up it went, past scenery so improbably dramatic it bordered on melodrama: sheer, densely forested mountainsides and thundering waterfalls and, to the left, the gradual unveiling of the Salmon Glacier, a six-mile thoroughfare of sparkling ice. After 17 miles of white-knuckle driving, we reached a sign—END OF MAINTAINED ROAD—and then . . . nothing. Nothing that showed any evidence of human trespass. And everything we'd come this far to see: to the north, a ridge of rock and tundra-covered mountains, all above the tree line; to the south, the Salmon Glacier, spreading like a rippling white ocean to the horizon. That this was the wildest land I'd ever reached by car was apparent the instant I set foot on it. There, by the side of the road, was a 10-inch bear track in a field of snow and, 10 yards beyond, the largest pile of scat I'd ever seen, black as my fearful heart.

With only animal trails to follow, keeping our bearing with the glacier at our backs, we hiked up the ridge, picking our route, constantly weighing the luxury of soft moss underfoot with the chance that a bear might have gotten the same idea. Each new step was a choice and a demand—to pay attention, to be alert. For bears, yes, but also for every small detail of the land: the way the dwarf willows hugged the edges of creeks, and the button-sized wildflowers flourished in the late-summer sun, and how all the vegetation finally gave way at the top to vast, lunar fields of shale and ice.

It wasn't until 10 p.m. that the last light had faded from the Western sky and reluctantly we returned to the car, bouncing back down the mining road toward town. Even with the engine's whine and the sound of wind blowing through the windows, we could hear a ruckus, so we pulled over to investigate. Running alongside the road was a creek, and running in the creek were thousands of salmon—jumping, thrashing against the current, ignoring the thousands more that lay on the rocks, belly-up and whitening in the chill, dark air. There, too, in the midst of the carnage, was a massive pitch-black mound of fur. On this moonless night, it was no more distinct than a shadow, but I knew—the way you know someone's coming up behind you without turning your head—that this was a bear.

For about a minute, we watched as this beast—this Rorschach test of my fears and desires—splashed around with a lighthearted ferociousness, rearing and pouncing, batting a half-dead salmon like a soccer ball. I won't say that I wasn't afraid. But fear, surprisingly, was not my primary emotion. For that minute, I was absolute alertness—all senses, no brain. This was what I'd been after all along: I had all but disappeared. For a moment the black mass vanished, and I jumped back toward the open car door. But then I heard the thick timber on the far bank snap and pop, and the willows shake: the bear was gone.