Wading with a Grizzly

It was July 29, 2024. We were watching the Olympics after dinner. Rob made a quiche and the French whitewater canoeist just won gold for his country.

As we sat in the living room with the dogs, Dylan was acting a little off. She kept repetitively licking at..nothing really..I guess the air? But she did it a noticeable amount. I started to feel stressed that it could be the early sign of a seizure, something she had suddenly started to experience regularly (about once a month) for a few years. So, I was doing my best to calm her (and myself) down.

The late summer temperatures were not helping. I had noticed that her biggest triggers seemed to be bright flashes, overexcitement, stress and heat. I took her outside and hosed her down a little, but she soon started doing it again. So, I told Rob I was going to walk her down to the water for a quick dip.

The rental we were staying at while we were rebuilding our house, which we devastatingly lost the year prior to a fire, was right above the Swan River. We would often walk down to floodplain, where an old sauna sat on the riverbank in a spot frequented by the local mink. There was a decent eddy here, where the dogs liked to cool off when the water levels dropped.

Rob decided that he and Lu would come, too.

View of the river and sauna from the house

We walked down the path next to the neighbor’s house and got down to the more open, grassy floodplain. Some patches of tall grass and riparian shrubs separated us from the water. Rob promptly let Lu off leash, and she took a few leaps, running ahead.

Just as she did that, I heard something taking brisk steps through the river, in our direction. It sounded bigger than a deer, whose movements were quite familiar to me at this point, but I couldn’t see whatever the animal was behind all the willows and alders.

Before she went any further, I grabbed Lu.

Within seconds, a tall chocolate bull elk popped out of the grass, maybe 20 feet away from us. It clearly hadn’t known we were there, but it turned, noticed us and the dogs, and bolted up the hill towards our house.

“Man, the one time i didn’t bring my phone,” I said to Rob.

We had left the house with nothing but ourselves, the dogs, and one leash (as long as one of the girls is confined to a leash, they’ll stick with us). For a split second, I wondered why the elk was alone and thought maybe something spooked it or was chasing it, but as quickly as the thought came, it left again.

We continued down towards the sauna, where we usually wade in the water and Dylan will do a few downdogs and a couple tight little laps - but both girls were preoccupied with sniffing for garter snakes and minks in the rocks along the bank.

Rob stood up on the grass, and I was in the water, facing him and the girls. I kept calling the dogs to join me in the water, as I waded calf-deep, a few feet away from them all.

And this is the point at which my memory gets a little fuzzy; I don’t clearly remember this part, but Rob helped me recollect…

Apparently Dylan barked, Rob looked up, and at the same time, I turned around, all to see a grizzly bear standing up on its hind legs, quietly looking at us.

At well over six feet tall (closer to seven, I’d say), it was maybe 20-25 feet away, just on the other edge of the river, closer than the recommended distance for deploying your bear spray (that distance is 30 feet).

The water was low and slow at that point in the year, an easy traverse for a muscular adult grizzly, and especially for one that might have blamed us for getting between it and its ungulate dinner.

Surprising myself with a nonexistent amount of cool, calm, and collected (which I always told myself I’d possess if I ever found myself in this kind of situation), I yelled, “shit. shit. fuck!” or some combination of the two, grabbed the dogs by their collars, got up next to Rob, and we both started yelling “hey bear!” and “it’s okay bear!” probably a little too loud…We wanted to let the bear know that we were humans, and we were not a threat. The raised voices were both from slight panic and trying to be heard above the rushing water between us.

You may have already guessed, but we left the bear spray back at the house too…

At first the bear appeared to recognize we weren’t interesting or enough of a threat, and it went back down on all fours, turned downstream, showing us its side, and I hoped and pictured that it was about to run off into the woods.

But that’s not what happened.

Just as Rob drawled, “Goood bear!” it turned back towards us and got up on its hind legs again.

Another round of “hey bear! HEY BEAR!” more urgently ensued.

I could tell there was an increasing tone of panic in my voice. At my work, we teach people to speak calmly to grizzlies, a species of bear that does not appreciate a threatening tone.

This time, when the hefty bear plopped back down to all fours, it took two steps towards the water, towards us.

I had been slowly backing up with the dogs, and losing most of my view of the bear, but as soon as Rob looked at me and said, “It’s still coming,” I lost it.

My heart started racing. I was basically dragging Dylan by her collar, when Rob started running towards us and doing the same to Lu.

The further back we moved, the less we could see the bear, and soon it was out of view altogether. We had no idea what it decided to do.

Rob headed towards the far path we came down, but as my basic, animalistic instinct for survival kicked in, I split off to the right, thinking that I had once noticed a path up to the neighbor’s house. The way Rob headed, the bear would have an easy view of him and zero obstacles to slow it down. I think that’s what I must have been thinking when I chose an unknown path. But when I came around the patch of tall grass surrounding a giant cottonwood, I was met with a wall of grass, downed trees, and thick bushes.

No path.

If I turned around, I’d be running back in the wrong direction to get to the way we came.

I couldn’t chance it, so I started to scrape my way and climb through the bushes up the hill. I was holding poor Dylan by her fur and collar, forcing her up through the bushes, not watching where I took each step. At one point she yelped and clearly wanted to get away, but I kept thrusting her upwards, towards the house.

It’s incredible how many thoughts and images can race through your mind when you’re in this fight or flight stage; it’s a particular kind of time travel.

Visions of other grizzly attacks I had heard about raced through my mind. I imagined the sound of the bear charging through the tall grass to get to me…Dylan and I were now the closer targets, and much slower as we tried to get through all the brush.

I imagined how loud I’d scream, how awful it would be for Rob to hear…how excruciating it would feel for the bears teeth and claws to tear through my skin. I imagined my coworker, the same friend who received the 911 alert about my house burning to the ground just months ago, now receiving an emergency alert for a grizzly attack, at my latest address.

I wanted to get up to the house in front of me as quickly as possible, even though i had no way to get in. It still felt like a beacon of safety.

If the bear wanted to, it could’ve followed me right up, it could’ve continued to follow me into the dirt road. Or across it into the large pasture between the highway and our homes.

“Just get to the horses,” I thought…

For some reason, being near them felt at least a little safer, even though I was sure they’d take off at the sight of an at-least-300-pound running bear..

I somehow made it to the porch of the vacant house, and I suddenly felt I could run 20mph faster now that I was on a flat surface. That felt like a good milestone.

I kept running to the road.

I still didn’t hear the bear, but my heart was in my throat.

I didn’t see Rob and Lu. I turned left to go back up the hill to our rental.

Then, suddenly, Lu came running up behind Me and Dylan, off leash again. Rob followed behind at a much more (perplexingly) relaxed pace, but I couldn’t stop running. I wouldn’t feel safe until I got inside the house.

As soon as I opened the door, I fell to the carpeted floor.

My throat was on fire in a way I’ve never felt before. Almost like the burning sensation I’d feel after puking, but x100 in intensity. My heart was racing so fast, I couldn’t catch my breath…I wondered if I was about to have a heart attack. Is this what it feels like?

“We have to move from Montana,” I thought. I couldn’t take one more traumatic event.

I moved to the cooler linoleum bathroom floor, and Rob gave me some frozen dog food to put on my chest and calm down.

I finally took in all the scrapes on my arms and legs, and the puncture in the side of my foot. Very, very slowly my breathing returned, and my heart rate started to come down. Through shallow breaths, Rob and I recounted the blur of what had just happened.

Apparently after he said “good bear,” he claims that I said “maybe not,” or something along those lines, but I’m not sure why I would have done that, especially since I couldn’t see the bear was still moving towards us.

Other than my river incident back in 2016, I don’t think I had ever been so scared in my life. I know I haven’t. And I know that the bear let us live. If it had wanted to, it would have been at our feet in just a few swift lunges.

We had done everything wrong. Everything I’ve ever taught any student, visitor, or tourist, I didn’t follow a lick of my own advice…I didn’t have my bear spray, I didn’t stay calm, I didn’t speak in a normal tone, I didn’t pay more attention to the red flag of the running elk.

I don’t know why so much happens to me by this river, and yet, I’m still drawn to live by it.

But I do know that I’ll never ever be walking down to the river alone or without bear spray ever again.

The image of that bear standing on its hind legs, the first image I saw when I turned around in the water, will forever be etched into my mind. Time bent in space and the milliseconds it took my brain took to take in and decipher what that massive espresso and caramel colored figure was felt like minutes. Only once my heart rate came back down, close to normal, could I think back and appreciate what a gorgeous bear it really was. Not super old, not young enough to still be with mom or recently dispersed…it was likely in the prime of its life, with a shiny, brilliant coat. And it was curious, very curious about our little clan playing in the rocks and wading in the water.

When it stood on its hind legs, it was just trying to get a better view and scent on us; not threatening. When it went back to all fours and turned, it could have been showing us its size, just to be like, “Hey, I’m big. If you were thinking of messing with me, don’t.” Or it could’ve been starting to walk away before curiosity pulled its attention back our way. It didn’t clack its jaw or stomp its feet or pin its ears back or any obvious threatening behavior. I don’t believe it was actually after the elk either. If it were, it would’ve continued on to our side of the river earlier. I think it just happened to be trying to escape the heat of the day by the water, just like we were, and the elk happened to be nearby, too, and had the same unnecessary reaction that I did.

I used to assume that because we talk to the dogs so much on our walks, that any animal would hear us coming from miles away and steer clear, that the dogs were a level of protection. And maybe the rustling of the river muffled our high-pitched dog parent voices, or maybe it’s part of what piqued the bear’s interest. We’ll never know. And I quickly realized how little safety the dogs offered, other than warning us of the bears presence (when it would have arguably been too late).

I wish I could’ve remained calm. I wish I could have slowly backed up while gently reassuring the bear and observing its behavior. But it was already too close, and without bear spray, there was no room for up-close curiosity.