On a particularly rainy day on Admiralty Island, my older brother Luke and I watched three land otters loping across Swan Cove’s expansive tidal flat.
“I’m going to run one down,” Luke said, motioning as if to take off his heavy backpack with his swollen and wrinkled hands.
We’d planned to walk the length of the island but, with stormy weather preventing us from landing in a floatplane at the exposed southern tip, we were forced to start in White Water Bay. For the last nine days I whined how, due to the 10 miles we lost, we’d never be heroes.
“My golden retriever puppy will never respect me!” I screamed at the universe. The sound of hard rain echoed in reply.
Luke dealt with his disappointment by becoming strangely obsessed with wanting to rodeo an otter. I don’t have his flare for chasing mustelids. In the pantheon of superheros, he’s like a mixture of Captain America and the Flash. Me, I’m more like the Plausible Hulk — a large man who eats a lot of nachos, rarely works out and becomes sadder and fatter when antagonized.
The otters, even without Luke chasing them, seemed to be running for their lives.
For good reason. There were bears out all over the place.
Near the treeline, a female and her two cubs were being chased by a large male. A younger boar trailed behind tentatively until the bigger bear turned and postured toward him. The spooky-looking larger male quickly won that argument and his rival trudged dejectedly in our direction. Soon he was 100 yards away and inadvertently paralleling us. A smaller bear was walking in our direction as well. Another bear grazed on sedge grass farther away.
Swan Cove is included in a small part of Admiralty Island that’s closed to bear hunting. Perhaps that explained why these bears seemed not to notice our intrusion. Elsewhere during our walk in areas open to hunting we encountered numerous bears. Perhaps it could be contributed to the heavy rain and often howling winds, but the majority let us get within rifle range despite our yelling to try to scare them off.
Brown bears never cease to surprise me. Perhaps the largest bear I’ve ever seen was one spring many years ago in an inlet where four bears had already been killed by hunters that year. Foolishly, I approached the massive animal as it fed on sedge grasses in an estuary until I was 70 yards away and in plain sight. It looked at me and then continued placidly grazing. I watched for a few moments before feeling guilty and walking back to the Lund I was borrowing.
A year before Luke and I made our walk, bad seas had forced me and a group I was guiding to beach our kayaks in Swan Cove to wait for better weather. I wandered off to find water for hot drinks. A large male, feeding on sedge 400 yards away, saw me. He immediately began a five mile-per-hour trudge my direction. He was inquisitive, probably thinking I was a smaller bear and hoping to either mate or whoop up on me. It was probably too much to ask for a gentle cuddling, so I took precautions to make sure there’d be no funny business by slowly backtracking to the group.
Luke and I slogged through the muck, more worried about getting across the flooded creek than a bear becoming aggressive. Normally the first creek in Swan Cove is easy to cross wearing rubber boots but, with the inordinately heavy rains, that day it was better classified as a river.
Luke and I stripped down and carefully picked our way across. We backtracked numerous times when the water got well above our waists and threatened to knock us off our feet.
There’s something exhilarating, even liberating, about swimming and playing in the mud while being surrounded by bears. This could be a fine eco tour/wilderness spa/no pants party if someone could figure out how to market it properly.
Out of the water, we watched the younger male continue to the head of the cove. We approached Swan Creek proper, which was significantly deeper, wider and swifter than the creek we’d just crossed. The smaller bear seemed to be suffering similar misgivings about crossing as it ambled in our direction and occasionally glanced at the deep current.
When the bear got a little too close, I hollered. It took one look at us and leapt into the creek and swam for all it was worth.
“That’s really deep,” Luke said as we watched the bear being carried downstream.
“It’s a small bear,” I said, trying to be optimistic.
Twenty minutes later, we sat on the other side shivering and putting our soaked pants and boots back on. The rain lessened, clouds swirled away from mountains and we hobbled on, leaving Swan Cove to the bears.
• Bjorn Dihle is a Juneau writer. He can be reached at bjorndihle@yahoo.com.
