The words just flow together, one evokes images of the other, and as travelers in the Great Land we have scanned the beaches looking for these magnificent creatures. This morning we said, "we're going to put a mother bear and cubs on the web page today," and not 20 minutes later we broke out on deck in the middle of breakfast to see a mother bear and her three spring cubs on a beach of Chichagof Island! It was as if we dreamed her into appearing on the beach. About 400 meters down the beach was another single brown bear, searching the intertidal zone for food, before it faded into the forest.
As the Sea Lion quietly approached this family of bears, we watched the mother feeding on the beach rye grass while the cubs searched for objects of amusement. First, one of the cubs dragged some bull kelp up the beach with its siblings in pursuit. Later one found a real prize, a small yellow bucket and ran toward the forest with its catch. Watching the cubs explore, stand and sniff, and carry off their discoveries while their huge protective mother hungrily fed nearby created a memory that will long burn in our minds.
It was just the beginning of a day in the bears' world. We went ashore in another bay to hike the Lake Eva trail. We discovered banana slugs feeding on coralroot orchid flowers. Cedar waxwings trilled from the branches overhanging blueberry bushes. The first of the sockeye and chum salmon were in the clear waters of the creek alongside the trail. On the beach we examined an abundance of clams and cockles alongside sea stars of many hues. It was a great place to be a bear.
After lunch in Kelp Bay we hiked and kayaked. The hikers crossed a meadow full of wildflowers and entered the forest on a bear trail. The kayakers paddled along the meadow and steep forested shorelines. As some of the paddlers returned to the beach they spotted another brown bear which was feeding on the blueberries. Alerting the hikers to the bear, hidden in the deep vegetation, we steered them toward the Zodiac landing on the salmon stream away from the bear. We had walked in the bear's country and we were acutely aware of his presence.
