I think it’s easy to see why people are drawn to bears.
For myself, it’s a fascination with the connections I can draw between them and humans. Specifically, I find the fact that some bears are creatures of habit (to the point of predicting their behavior based on time) is fascinating, and absolutely similar to my natural tendency.
I think it’s also fascinating to us as a species to actually fear another species. If you’re in the presence of a bear, chances are you are afraid. Possibly mystified, but also afraid. Or at least (I believe) you should be. They are incredibly powerful, and I certainly didn’t walk into the National Park that was home to the largest protected population of Brown Bears with out a healthy dose of fear. But, the thing that surprised me the most was the kind disposition I saw in some of the Katmai Bears.
I loved watching a sow and her two young cubs out in the meadow. Her cubs were under a year old, and rambunctious to say the least. The mother almost had a tinge of annoyance about her when the cubs sprinted in front of her and started wrestling. At one point, the two youngsters had discovered a pile of wood. Well, more like they crashed into while wrestling. They crawled all over it, carefully testing how much weight the branches could hold with their paws. The mother sat a distance away, and at one point absolutely just turned her back away from them and watched off in the other direction. When she had enough waiting for the two she stared at them for 20 seconds, seemingly scolding them. They both slowly crawled of the wood pile, and walked slowly, heads hanging, to their mother who was already making her way down the path.
The time I got to spend with these bears was incredibly short. No more than 48 hours in Hallow Bay and no more than 48 hours on the remote coast of Katmai. But in those hours I became full heartedly obsessed with bears. I fear them and their power, and am simultaneously curious about them and the lives they live.
My name is Kaiti Chritz, and I’m obsessed with Bears.
Kaiti Grant 