Some Days You Get the Bear, Some Days the Bear Gets You

“Be scared,” Sam said. “You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.” (Faulkner, The Bear)

There’s nothing wrong with being cautious in the era of Covid-19, but at some point, you have get up off the ground and stop being afraid. For those of us who started a website devoted to travel just before this crap hit, we knew that the time would come to hit the road, or the air, as the case may be, but the questions were “when” and “where.”

Alaska seemed like a good choice. Not only for the reasons I’ve outlined previously, or because it was one of Hanna’s three remaining states, but because it offers everything in abundance. Great food, epic scenery even from the downtown areas of the biggest cities, large expanses without footprints, and of course ridiculously fertile fisheries. More than anything, even for a misanthrope like me, it’s the people.

I’ve spent four months wearing a butt-shaped pattern into my office chair, away from co-workers and friends, but I knew that the people of Alaska would welcome me. When my friends Cory and Matt and I camped there for a month in 1995, people offered us sleeping space on their floors. Restaurants gave us free meals. We made new friends at every stop without trying. Then, when I went back last year, I made new friends, like Bear Trail Lodge owner Nanci Morris Lyon, a world-record-holding badass who took me and Keith Combs in like family. People may end up in The Last Frontier by accident, but no one stays there accidentally, and everyone has a story to tell. Often it revolves around fish, which, not quite coincidentally, is the language I care to speak most.

So when it was time to go somewhere, Alaska was the most obvious choice. It would be not a toe-dip back into travel, but rather a polar bear plunge. The fish – big king salmon and sockeyes on the Naknek, as well as rainbows, grayling and Dolly Vardens on the smaller streams – did their part. We have a full freezer from the former group, sore muscles from the latter, and indelible memories of both. Alaska Airlines helped out as well, with social distancing and hygiene practices that made us feel at ease. As expected, though, it was our hosts who made it most special, from our float plane pilots, to the young women training sled dogs on a glacier, and most notably the family at Bear Trail Lodge.

The 49th state has become an overwhelming addiction, and the best antidote to fear. This time, we got the bear.

“I can’t be dangerous, because there’s nothing much smaller than I am; I can’t be fierce, because they would call it just a noise; I can’t be humble, because I’m already too close to the ground to genuflect; I can’t be proud, because I wouldn’t be near enough to it for anyone to know who was casting the shadow, and I don’t even know that I’m not going to heaven, because they have already decided that I don’t possess an immortal soul. So all I can be is brave. But it’s all right. I can be that, even if they still call it just noise.”