Had someone told me, when I first came to Banff, Alberta, that I’d find myself squatting on a narrow track by a pile of warm animal dung, prodding it with a stick to see what mysteries it might contain, I’d probably have laughed. Now, though, this is a matter of real interest.
With two companions from the Banff Centre’s literary arts programme (the writers Greg Hollingshead and Linda Spalding), I had been following a trail through deep spruce and aspen near the abandoned mining town of Bankhead, when we found evidence of the creature that most compels the imagination in these parts: Ursus arctos horribilis, better known as the grizzly bear. Or rather, we think it’s a grizzly – hence the prodding and pulling and, with no hint of distaste or squeamishness, the careful teasing out of our unexpected treasure.
I am new to this (I probably wouldn’t know grizzly shit from apple and cinnamon oatmeal), but the size, content and consistency of our find is certainly indicative of a large omnivore and we are all quite relieved to consider that these are fairly old deposits, probably from this morning – relieved, because Ursus arctos horribilis not infrequently lives up to its name and because, even though a male can grow to over 300 kilograms in weight, it can easily outrun a human being. It can also climb trees, so no escape there.
Some hikers in these woods go armed with bear repellent and whistles, though whether such accessories help in an emergency is much debated. When one hiker asked a warden if it was worth buying a whistle to scare off the bears, the reply came: “There’s no need to buy one, ma’am. Just find a pile of old scat and you can probably dig one out for free . . .”
Banff National Park is home to many remarkable creatures (elk, deer, wolves, ravens, mountain lions, American pikas, Columbian and golden-mantled ground squirrels) but most evenings the talk around the bar and the dinner table usually returns to bears, as survivors of close encounters tell their stories with an odd mix of tenderness and continuing wonder.
In just three weeks, I have heard many such stories, but none quite matches the tale Greg tells of the solitary walker who, one spring day in the woods, suddenly found a female brown bear directly blocking his path. The accepted wisdom says that, in such situations, you should adopt a deferential, unthreatening pose and back away slowly – which the man wisely did, but the bear kept coming and, in a matter of moments, he was obliged to revert to a very dubious plan B. Climb a tree.
What happened next beggars belief – and at first it must have persuaded Greg’s friend that all the gods in heaven were against him; for, in all this densely forested land, he had chosen to climb the one tree where this concerned mother’s two cubs had temporarily taken up residence. It was only when he was halfway to the top, the mother still in pursuit, that he saw them. The vision must have chilled him to the bone. Everybody knows that there is nothing more dangerous than to come between a mother bear and her young – and Greg’s friend was very much between them.
Surely he was doomed. With nothing else to do, he froze, clinging helplessly to the tree as the beast moved closer, then closer, and then, amazingly, clambered up and over him (he said he could feel her belly sliding across his back) to scoop the cubs from their branch and lower them to safety. Her warmth and smell overwhelmed him as she slid gently across his back once more, leaving him shaken but unharmed and, perhaps more importantly, gifted with a story to add to the trove of bear lore that in this neck of the woods preserves a little of the old pact – part terror, part wonder – between humanity and our wildest kin.
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