Brooks Camp Field Report, July 2022: Chaos and Endurance
What is known to seasoned Alaskans as a "bear cub."
Friends,
I’m back at home unexpectedly after catching COVID at Brooks following the hardest and in many ways the most exciting day I’ve experienced at Brooks Camp. It was probably the most physically difficult day I’ve experienced since my time in the infantry forty years ago.
I had started to notice mild symptoms by the end of my shift on Thursday, but on Friday morning a test came back negative. Nonetheless, I knew there was a decent chance I had COVID. Two boats were leaving camp very soon, and no others for the next couple of days. I knew that on the open-air deck of a boat I could ride without risk to my fellow passengers. Also, if I stayed in camp and then tested positive, I would be stuck in a cabin, unable to even go outside, for at least five days. Being home sounded much better, so I decided to try to catch one of the boats out. There followed a typical episode of Brooks Camp Last-Minute Improv Theatre, with all of its miscommunications, ambiguities, and confusing radio traffic. In the end (with some help from fellow bear-crew members) I found myself heading back to Lake Camp on the maintenance landing barge, “The Q”, along with a couple of archeologists and several members of the maintenance staff.
My second test, at home on Saturday, was positive. My symptoms were strong enough at that point that the results came as no surprise.
Up until Thursday the pace of my shifts wasn’t all that unusual, and well within the range that I could recuperate from and start more or less fresh the next day. The most remarkable thing about bear activity in camp was the extreme number of courting couples (and sometimes courting threesomes) that passed through.
“Courting couple” is Brooks parlance for females being pursued by amorous adult males. Sometimes the females are clearly frightened and trying to escape the male’s lumbering but tenacious pursuit. Sometimes they clearly want the pursuit, stopping to calmly look over their shoulder and wait while the male catches up. Mostly it’s impossible to tell (for me anyway) how they feel about it. In general the pursuit is just a matter of walking, mile after mile, but I have seen couples stop to play like cubs, at least when the male is a younger adult. In most of my experience, however, when they stop together it’s to mate.
The courting couples by themselves are usually not that much of a hassle when they enter camp. They are walking—not running—and are focused on the business at hand. The problem from a bear management perspective is that dominant male bears moving across the landscape act as bear-ploughs, pushing all manner of other bears out ahead of them. Many of these bears are in a dead panic and on the run, and come speeding into camp in all kinds of chaotic ways, and not infrequently four or five at a time. This can become a Category V Gerbil Circus if the sow ends up using camp as a kind of obstacle course to either test or throw off the male.
During my time in bear management before this year I have only witnessed two or three of these visits by courting couples per season. This year we had courting couples at least a couple of times per day, every day, and on Thursday we had them wandering through camp, pushing other bears back and forth, for at least four hours during the height of visitor presence in camp. Simultaneously, I had a nervous sow with two spring cubs trying to find a quiet spot just outside of camp to take refuge from the ursine whirlwind. Michael and Trevor were also on duty at the time and they mostly stayed on the north end of camp, hammering at the sides of the bear vortex to keep it somewhat under control. I stayed with the sow and cubs on the south side around the lodge, both to try to keep (mostly?) well-meaning but overly curious visitors from making the sow's experience even more stressful than it already was, and to also keep subadults away from the family, and out of camp in general.
Toward the end of my watch over the bear family a subadult unwittingly came and sat down only a few yards from them, while they were resting in the tall grass just on the river side of the trail from the lodge to Overlook. I was tempted to haze the subadult off but didn’t know how the sow would react. The result was that after a brief moment of calm the sow came at the subadult in full maternal fury, the two of them shooting past me less than ten feet away. After the sow relented and turned to go back to her cubs, I took up the chase to make sure the subbie was driven completely out of camp. Incredibly, not five minutes later another subadult did virtually the same thing and with virtually the same results from both the sow and me.
It’s hard to describe how it can be so exhausting when your main duty is just keeping eyes on a mostly stationary bear family. The “keeping eyes on” part isn’t so difficult. It’s the running off subadults who are getting too close to or even parking beside the family, dealing with people slipping around both sides of the lodge to take a closer look and get some photos, zipping over to between the lodge and office to deal with some random bear that just popped in by the bridge gate, coming back to deal with all the people trying once again to surround the family for photos while you were absent, then repeat, repeat, repeat, etc. etc. Another aspect of why this was such an endurance test for me is that this maelstrom was just half of a shift that was otherwise still extremely busy. Of course being 57, doing a job meant for people 20-30 years younger than me, as part of an understaffed team, with a record number of bears on the river, didn’t help either.
Returning briefly to the subject of courting couples... One thing I learned on this stint was just what a panic adult males go into when they’ve lost the sow they are following, generally because she has disappeared into the brush downwind of him. It would be reasonable to infer that these ultra-macho bears would go into some kind of hyper-aggressive fit of frustration, but in the instances I observed that was not at all the case. They were as vulnerably worried as little spring cubs who’ve lost track of mom. If they weren’t a lean, early-summer 900 lbs. it would be a sad sight. The two times that I had to haze one of these love-panicked mega-bruins to keep him from coming into camp, he retreated like a timid subadult. As soon as we was out of camp he went back to his manic circling, and began making forlorn, cub-like moans.
Especially since I did not have time to take notes, Thursday quickly became (with a few vivid exceptions) a blur of brown fur and jostling humans. I’m happy to say that when I had a chance to explain momma bear’s predicament, almost everyone cooperated, at least while I was present. I’m also happy to note that, surprisingly, neither I nor anyone else on the team have been charged so far this year, although I’m sure that won’t last. [Just as I was getting ready to send this message I found out that Eric spayed 901. No surprise there. She has been belligerently cruisin’ for a sprayin’ since the start of the season.] I am hoping to make it back to camp in time to at least finish the last week of my July tour.
I want to end with a thought about camp life at Brooks. For my first time, I am living in the section of the main camp called “Park Avenue”, sharing a cabin with my teammate and bear chasing buddy Eric Johnston. Park Ave. used to be where most of the Brooks staff stayed before some of the housing was moved across the river. I’ve spent a lot of time in past years living nearby in the yurt, but to paraphrase Mae West “I’ve lived in the yurt and I’ve lived on Park Avenue, and Park Avenue is better.” Some photos below will give a sense of what it is like.
Some of the cabins on Park Avenue have a toilet and shower. Others do not. The one Eric and I are living in does not. So, as is the case for some others on Park Avenue and in the yurt, it’s a 40 to 50 foot walk to the bathhouse. Obviously that means any time, day or night. The area around the bathhouse also happens to be a hub for bear movement through the north side of camp. A sign that you have become a true Brooks veteran is when you have fully ingrained the habit of looking in all directions for bears when you are either heading to, or heading from, the Park Avenue bathhouse, above all when stepping out the bathhouse door.
A small thing, perhaps, but it makes me happy to know that there are still places where you need to look both ways for bears when going to or from the bathroom, and that I have been fortunate enough to experience one of them.
***
Photos below showing, for the first time to the general public, the gritty, behind-the-scenes reality of the Brooks Camp Babylon known as Park Avenue.
See you downriver,
Carl
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