Lance Lekander

ADRENALINE IN A CAN

I’M LIVING A NIGHTMARE—stuck in a tiny, wooden cell in the heat of a sunny August day. A little peephole in the door is my only view to the world outside. I’m surrounded by evergreen-scented air fresheners but, below me, a thin plywood sheet is the only thing between my feet and a pile of human waste. Outside, pacing black bears force me to wait in my personal hell until I get the signal from my smirking boyfriend, Alex, that all’s clear.

I’m not sure about you, but being imprisoned in the outhouse at Anan Creek Wildlife Observatory’s viewing platform is not my idea of a once-in-alifetime experience.

Thirty-four miles south of Wrangell in Southeast, Anan Creek is the little-known stepsister of world-famous bear-viewing sites such as McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and the National Park Service’s Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park— managed areas that have hard-to-win permit lottery systems (McNeil) or draw more than 10,000 visitors annually (Brooks). Images of enormous brown bears from these areas, lined up along splattering river overfalls, snaring salmon in their powerful jaws are ubiquitous in Alaska photography collections.

Host to the largest pink salmon run in Southeast, Anan Creek may be less popular in the world of bear viewing because a majority of its ursine residents are black bears, but it is wellknown in research circles as one of the few feeding areas where black and brown bears coexist. This tenuous truce is helped by the fact that the dense forest of Sitka spruce, western hemlock, alder and black cottonwood at Anan allows black bears to climb where few brownies will go—up.

Alex and I live in Anchorage, which arguably has the highest density of bear and human cohabitation in the world. We are used to being in bear territory, where you put bear bells on your dog not only to warn ursus of your impending arrival, but to let wary, gun-toting trail users know your approaching canine is not a brown bear about to maul them. What do we city dwellers have to show for our ever-vigilant bear-avoidance techniques? We usually think they are all out to kill us—a belief that was quickly refuted earlier in the day as we walked from Anan Lagoon, where we had anchored our boat, to the fi sh pass at Anan Creek. On the half-mile pathway from the lagoon to the viewing deck, we encountered a female brown bear on a mission. Alex and I stood together, talked loudly and backed up—using bear-confl ict evasion techniques a Forest Service offi cer had described during a shoreside orientation a few minutes earlier. Unarmed—without even a can of bear spray—it was an adrenaline rush that left me jittery and jazzed. The bear didn’t care about us; we were just two humans between her and the delectable, half-rotten pink salmon that would be her next meal. Eventually, she went left and we went right.

We politely waited our turn on the viewing platform in a covered blind that was just feet from the fi sh pass and a constant stream of hungry bears. On the platform, we watched the show with 15 other awestruck tourists. Black bears were everyWhere—in trees, the river and even under the deck we stood on. There were at least 10 within 200 feet of us at all times. The Forest Service allows 60 bear viewing permits a day at Anan, but there were never more than 20 people on the livingroom- size platform while we were there.

It is difficult to avoid anthropomorphizing bears when you are watching them in action. Individual animals exhibit distinct characteristics and their temperaments and body movements distinguish them from each other. There was a timid young male that hid in a rock crevice whenever a larger boar passed, and a punky, aggressive chap who chased off anyone that tried to take his prized fi shing spot. A ragged momma bear dutifully trekked back and forth between the stream and a spruce tree where her cub, clinging 20 feet up, whined for choice chunks of fi sh. A fat, full-bellied bear with a white spot on his chest lounged in a tree at eye-level with us—posing for postcard-perfect photos and eliciting ohhs and ahhs all around.

A Forest Service ranger answered the group’s persistent questions and took detailed observations of bear and human activity. The ranger, who had probably spent hundreds of hours at the platform, shared his knowledge of individual animals— which one was a troublemaker and which one looked skinny—to a rapt audience.

Alex and I were mesmerized by the activity. We had never stopped to watch bears in action before. Like most people in Anchorage, we learned to hoot, yell and divert when we saw them in the woods. Here, bears fi shed, ate and interacted with each other, often fewer than 10 feet away, and they didn’t appear to care that we were there. We felt deceptively safe and isolated from the activity around us. In reality, an aggressive bear could have easily hopped onto the deck’s wooden railing and taken a swipe at us— fortunately, that has not happened since the platform was built in 1965.

Hours passed and we couldn’t tear ourselves away—and this is where the trouble with the outhouse started. In all of the excitement, I didn’t realize I had to go until Alex laughed at the sight of me trying to get a photo of a cub slipping and sliding his way across a downed log with my legs crossed in a contortionist’s pose.

The outhouse, a 30-second walk from the viewing platform, was across a welltraveled bear path. The view of the area was clear from the platform, but once you were inside the outhouse you had to rely on a partner at the deck to give you the all clear when you were done.

As I attended to my powder-room needs, two bears wandered into the area. Apparently, my situation was entertaining to the human crowd on the deck— when I peered through the peephole, looking for a thumbs-up from Alex, I saw a throng of people with cameras pointed my way. Alex stood there laughing as he gave me the no-go sign.

I waited in the outhouse, trying to calm myself with some of the Anan factoids that I had read before visiting—but the only thing that came to mind was a little blurb about how a black bear had ripped the door off an outhouse in the area years ago.

Eventually, the bears moved on and I returned to the platform. Later, on the walk back to our boat, Alex and I talked about how those few short hours had changed our perspective and attitude toward bears. We went to Anan Creek expecting to see some bears, but neither of us knew we would be in such an intimate setting with these wild, powerful animals.

It really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, even if I spent part of it imprisoned in the outhouse.