Life & Death of a Grizzly Lover 2

Poor Senator Stevens! Alaska Sena- Tanyo Ravicz tor Ted Stevens was up to his ears in brown bears. The whole thing made him bilious at “Well, I see that you’re not a pile of bones from those bears yet,” Bill said, shaking my hand breakfast. First the Coast Guard took him heartily. bear viewing in Katmai National Park on the “Not yet, but Hulk paid me a visit last night mainland and at Frazer Lake on Kodiak Is- and it did get a little scary!” land. Then he had to give a business speech Among Grizzlies: Living With Wild Bears In at the Kodiak Inn. At breakfast before the Alaska speech he met with community leaders

scrambling to devise a brown bear man- What a rush! Timothy Treadwell lost agement plan for Kodiak. Ecotourism, air his life when he got himself killed by a taxi operators, hunting interests — they all brown bear recently, but he didn’t lose in wanted a piece of the bears. “Fly-in bear- the living of it. He’s still a hero. He was viewing at Frazer Lake is doomed if the feds wrong about the bears but he was right give it Wild and Scenic River designation,” about the way he lived his life. To Timothy somebody bitched in his ear. Senator Ste- Treadwell, Timothy Treadwell was a savior. vens bit into his toast. Crunch. What he He set himself up as a Christ figure and the hated was not their jockeying for an audi- bears killed him not knowing what they did. ence with him — frankly, he loved this — it He loved them, unconditionally. Done with was their goddamned petty self- dope, he was filled with hope: lived with interestedness. What thrilled Ted Stevens bears in the summer and preached their was the grand game, the sublimated fracas gospel in the winter. Be good to bears was of politics, the banners flung out in the his mission and his born-again hug-the- wind; when they actually threw at him their world enthusiasm is positively catching. His bogus statistics, their fiscal projections and courage is astounding. His achievements on winking bear yarns, it irritated him. behalf of bears are arguable, but it’s impos- August 2000. A presidential election sible not to admire what Timothy Treadwell loomed. Senator Stevens hated Bill Clinton’s did for Timothy Treadwell in his quest for guts, and if for no other reason than this, no emotional peace and spiritual belonging. petitioner should have wondered how he Read Among Grizzlies (co-author Jewel would vote on an issue. Palovak) and you’ll see how bears were the The Senator glumly ate his bacon supporting cast in Timothy Treadwell’s psy- while they chattered around him. Like a chodrama. As he says to his ursine friend dominant beast among lesser creatures, he Mr. Chocolate, “I’m ashamed to be human! was the only one eating. He didn’t have a I want to be like you, wild and free, liberat- giant drumstick in his hand or a gold chain ed from the wicked ways of people.” This around his neck, but there was a bit of the tells us nothing about bears. It tells us noth- royal personage in him, and he would have ing about human beings. But it tells us a liked to be able to say it and not just to great deal about Timothy Treadwell. think it: Off with their heads!

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3 proud of being human as when he nomi- nates himself First Human to venture into Decapitation occurs quite often in one of these danger zones. But if you’re the the universe of Timothy Treadwell. Bears first human going in there, how can you tell are endlessly decapitating salmon when us you’re going in to protect the bears from they catch them, and bears are always ca- poachers? There was a deep crack in his pable of decapitating you if they want. motivations. The two projects that occupied Treadwell knew this. Intellectually he rec- Timothy Treadwell — what he was doing for ognized the bears’ capacity to kill, but he himself as a man, and what he was doing couldn’t stand to say in as many words that for the wild bears of Katmai — were never it’s in their nature to kill because this would completely in harmony. besmirch the Idea which bears as exemplars of “perfect” harmony and bearers of “the truth” had come to represent for him. 4 There is one context where Timothy Treadwell never underplays the danger Breakfast with the Senator is over. posed by brown bears, and that’s when he In the lobby, two of the participants, local strides forth to confront it. Yes, sir. He is men, are talking about brown bears. I hap- repeatedly a hairsbreadth from being killed pen to be present, and it’s the first I’ve by bears. One bear zone he describes as be- heard the name of Timothy Treadwell. One ing packed with dangerous antisocial bears of these locals, Pete, a bush pilot, has flown ready to prey on anything that moves. Ex- Treadwell to a remote spot in Katmai Na- cuse me? Is this Timothy Treadwell talking tional Park and Preserve. The other man — or is it maybe his editor setting us up? No sells sporting goods in Kodiak. Both are way, Tim, don’t go in there, come back! mildly contemptuous of Treadwell, who is None of which subtracts from his said to appear on talk shows. Treadwell is ballsiness. Damn! Can’t you see him out trying to be “the Dian Fossey of brown there hunkering and gutturalizing, then bears.” He has some “very strange manner- standing tall and charging the bears? It’s isms” and looks “like a California surfer guy” some of the best stuff in his book. Fool- and is “very effeminate.” hardy or not, for sheer raw guts Tim takes Most of this is run-of-the-mill insu- the prize. Give him the girl, too. Only, what- larity, it seems to me. But I am curious ever you do, Tim, don’t take her out there about Treadwell. A Californian myself, I with you. He knew better than to take any- have never held a surfer’s appearance body out there with him, but he took her against anyone. Like Treadwell I spent much anyway. Amie Huguenard was killed right of the 1990s doing countermainstream stuff there beside him in Katmai. But more on in the Alaska wilderness. Their criticism that that later. Treadwell is “only in it to generate publicity, To emphasize his daring while con- and sees an opportunity to make some tinuing to raise big bucks, Treadwell has to money” is more troubling than the personal have it both ways about the brown bears. slanders. Their most serious criticism is that Peaceful at heart, they will kill you for the he misrepresents the nature of bears. slightest mistake. This contradiction is cen- Somehow a distortion of the facts, tral to Treadwell’s work. He is never so even for a good reason, irritates the hell out

2 of me. When Robin Williams complains in searchers who rely on electric fences for one of his pictures that human beings are security, or those of us who go armed in the only animal that kills their own kind — bear country, he thought fools. No doubt an often-heard canard — he’s just plain some of his enemies saw him as (in his own wrong. Brown bears do it, among other words) “just another eco-faggot Yankee species, and to Timothy Treadwell’s credit, from the lower forty-eight trying to take he admits it, though with terse reluctance. away their god-given right to shoot wildlife Pete the bush pilot has flown bear for fun and profit.” But when it comes to viewers into Katmai for years. Pete’s the “evil humans” and “greedy developers,” kind of staid conservative you are glad to nobody is more cartoonish in his prejudices have at the throttle of your single-engine than Timothy Treadwell. There are good plane. Unflamboyant, unlike Treadwell, guys and bad guys, and Treadwell and the Pete will never be asked to take his bows on bears are the good guys. No wonder law- Letterman. But he has had extensive oppor- abiding gun owners breathed a sigh of re- tunities to watch brown bear behavior. lief, and Treadwell aficionados a sigh of dis- Mother bears will leave their cubs by Pete’s appointment, when they read in the news- planeload of ecotourists knowing that the paper that the evidence was conclusive: in big boars won’t go near the people. Pete October 2003 Timothy Treadwell and Amie has seen the big males kill the cubs and not Huguenard were killed by bears, not poach- necessarily for the purpose of eating them. ers or anti-bear-huggers. Bears. This was a He has seen them actively go after the tragedy, not a martyrdom. weak-looking cubs. The big males don’t like cubs, they like young sows. Ask Pete about the big boar that stomped on a cub who 5 wouldn’t let him mount its mother in peace. When the cub started squealing again, in Two months before the Senator’s the middle of the copulation, a second big breakfast, I heard an amusing thing. I was boar ran over and stomped on it to shut it alone at my cabin on Kodiak Island listening up. Now there’s genuine cooperative be- to Alaska news on the one radio station I havior for you! receive there. A government scientist study- What am I saying? Was Timothy ing brown bears in Katmai National Park Treadwell wrong in his depiction of benevo- had come to the conclusion that the chim- lent male bears who “peacefully ruled the ing of bells doesn’t necessarily frighten land”? Well, the truth is manifold, and brown bears or even alert them to a human Treadwell’s vision being a moral vision is all presence. The scientist hid by a busy bear of a piece, the opposite of manifold. It’s a trail and jingled bells at them with no effect. vision born in his heart and soul, in the do- This report was surely an occasion main of his childhood — of his wish king- for belly laughter in far-flung rustic living dom. Only secondarily does it emerge from rooms. Alaskans love to talk bears. “I’ve got experience, his experiences in a controlled this new bear repellent,” a man tells me. setting, a sanctuary where hunting hasn’t “What is it,” I say, “some kind of pepper been permitted in decades. For other peo- spray?” And he shows me a picture of his ple’s experiences in other locales, Treadwell mother-in-law. displayed a good deal of contempt. Re-

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Outdoorspeople and bushrats de- pitch when I have seen a wild bear. Now velop their own philosophies for living with every time I look at California’s flag I burn bears. Most of these are pragmatic mixes of with anger and heartache for what’s miss- respect for the bears and an earnest desire ing. When I hike in California, I walk through not to get mauled by one. I knew one man, a badly diminished landscape, and my body it’s true, whose position was unconsciona- knows this and grows lazy without the ble. Shoot ’em and keep shooting, was his wakefulness it knew. The grandeur of the philosophy. “Bears are varmint. Pests, not grizzlies is lost, and my senses are squan- pets.” But in my experience most people dered in vain regret. want the bears to survive and to thrive and they have no wanton interest in hurting them. In Kodiak recently when a Coast 6 Guard MP shot a mother bear and her dumpster-diving cub in a half-witted case of Early in my years of homesteading, I “necessity,” the local outrage was stupen- was charged by a mother brown bear and dous. Predictably, the dividing line in peo- spent a cold and tedious hour on the roof of ple’s love for the bears is their own person- a derelict cabin, listening to her threats al safety. When a rash of bears showed up while she patrolled between me and the in the Hillside section of Anchorage, the slender spruce tree up which her cubs had Hillside residents pushed for a special bear climbed. I owned a shotgun, but it was out hunt and the rest of Anchorage opposed it. of reach, down on the ocean bluffs under a That’s a clue for all of us. The bears’ future half ton of equipment. In that hour I could is bright only if we’re willing to preserve ex- have decided that a gun is an unnecessary panses of wilderness where the bears can vanity, that I had the courage to live in live without having to cross at our cross- brown bear country without one. But I walks and smell our savory trash. didn’t. Mostly I thought of my wife and the Wild bears are the wilderness. The two young children I wanted to bring out to woods are a sadly shrunken place where no the homestead once I had built something bears roam, and a tundra without bears is habitable. Crouching in the deep summer only a barren. Once graced with wild bears, twilight, hearing the bear huff and chide her a place will never be the same without little ones for not coming down from the them. There is no longer that air of primal tree, then dimly seeing them descend and fatefulness that hangs over the life of the her enormous outline dissolve with them in place, the same tautening of the senses that the forest gloom, I determined to do every- checks the dulling process of habituation, thing in my power not to cross the bears in the same deep real fearsome context the coming years, not to offend or taunt or against which we joy in the finer pleasures tempt them, but I also determined that my of a flower blossom or a breezy afternoon. shotgun would never again be locked away When I first encountered brown bears in in a case out of reach. the wild, I was awed and filled with a curi- Later, when I had raised a dwelling ous longing. No matter how alarming my and installed a vhf radio, I was fiddling with bear dreams had been, my impulse was to the channels one June morning when I follow them, to remain close in wonder- chanced on a memorable conversation. The ment. My heart beats at a more exalted voices were known to me. One speaker, my

4 nearest human neighbor, lived a mile away. These are opinionated men, yes, but The other lived eight miles away on a dif- they aren’t stupid men. You will never see ferent island. I have never made a habit of their weathered faces on Letterman, but eavesdropping, but in this case, hearing my their years of living in bear country are not name pronounced, I thought I had a right to for that reason irrelevant. About the bells listen in. they already knew what the rest of us “ — yeah, we have lots of bears here needed a government scientist to tell us. too. Getting kind of testy.” These men would consider it ignoble to get “You know my neighbor here, killed by brown bears and especially to have Tanyo, a bear got into his inflatable and bit to be scraped up and flown out of the bush it up pretty good.” at taxpayer expense. They are life-hardened “That’s the fella that wears them men, not likely to reach for words like “hu- bells?” bris” or even “tragedy” when discussing “No, Tanyo, he’s down east of me. what happened to Timothy Treadwell. “He You mean my friend Gary up here by the brought it on himself,” they’ll say. lake.” (Gary had retired from the Coast Guard and was camping nearby.) “You talking sense to him?” 7 “Well, Gary says the bears are all friendly. I think he’s having fun with me. He Timothy Treadwell had plenty of says he doesn’t have to cache his food be- self-knowledge. He was wise to the “reck- cause he brings it into bed with him.” less adventurer” in him. He referred often “He better put a slice of bread on enough to the possibility of his death that each end of it. You know what they say, you have to wonder if he had a death wish. when you dig in the bear poop, you’ll find Strangers in sporting goods stores and vet- them tiny bells in it — dinner bells.” eran park rangers warned him he was “I know what kind of bells to wear tempting fate, not because he refused to go — Winchester bells.” armed, but because he insisted on mingling “I had a logging job where they gave so intimately with the bears. In doing this us each a can of pepper spray. The foreman he knowingly broke the park rules that form said there wasn’t guns allowed in camp, but a crude ethics for our interacting with bears he might look the other way if someone in public lands. Timothy Treadwell wasn’t were to slip one in their bag, say. The only bound by those rules. He immersed himself spray that works on a bear is triple-ought in the bear hierarchy to help animals and buckshot.” people alike: “For the animals, my presence “I hear on the news where the bears offers a shield of protection from human love the pepper spray. It’s just like catnip to displacement and poaching. For people, my them.” studies will help in understanding the natu- There followed a lengthy anecdote ral ways of the bears and will make a con- about a bear that had swum out to some- tribution toward their preservation.” body’s setnet and ate the salmon out of it. Maybe. If his studies enabled him to “You be sure you have your bells raise money which he devoted to the on,” one man said in goodbye to the other. preservation and expansion of bear habitat — Yes. But observing and documenting

5 bear behavior is in itself an old racket with reference to bears and poachers alone. played by scientists and institutions who “Poachers” was his profitable default an- use ugly and invasive means which degrade swer. One of the best things about reading the bears without necessarily helping them. Treadwell is he provokes you — I suspect Understanding the biochemistry of hiberna- unintentionally, through his godawful slop- tion never did a damn thing for a bear: just py writing — to consider some of life’s big give them the space to hibernate in peace questions: of fear, of the meaning of wil- and they’ll be fine. derness, the nature of animals, and of our Likewise, having reams of bear pho- own nature. And there is this question yet tos is gratifying as a virtual zoo is gratifying to be asked: — to us. Treadwell was accused by park Was Timothy Treadwell the sort of rangers of harassing the bears by his pic- person Timothy Treadwell wanted to pro- ture-hungry presence. His descriptions of tect the bears from? the feeding, mating and social behavior of Katmai’s brown bears make for fascinating reading. Their scientific value I can’t judge. 8 Treadwell never claims to be a scientist, but he shares with many scientists, as well as What happened at Kaflia Bay was a poets and assorted Faustians, the desire to small apocalypse. For bear lovers and for get to the bottom of something, to possess Timothy Treadwell’s ideals it was a disaster. a truth at their peril, to delve into mysteries At least he died doing what he loved? Give and come out the stronger for it. me a break. Apart from the human dead, at Nothing wrong with that. A man af- least two bears were destroyed. Kaflia Bay ter our hearts. We’re drawing nearer to is now on the radar of a billion nine hun- Timothy Treadwell’s personal quest. Again dred million twenty-six people. Countless and again he tells us that wild bears are schoolkids have heard that the nice man peaceful when left alone in their natural who said nice things about nice bears was environment. But he couldn’t leave them just killed and eaten by one. Countless peo- alone. He’s relentlessly in their faces. He ple privately imagine the cruel events that admits he’s an “invader,” but like a kinder brought down Amie Huguenard. The and gentler colonialist, he figures that if he screams of this nightmare are preserved invades often and tactfully enough, he’ll be forever in an audio recording. Our instinc- taken for a guest. tive fears of man-killing predators are rea- “I’m here to save you and all of your wakened. Some schmuck in the sticks raises subjects,” he informs a skeptical bear. Ob- his gun and ices one for Amie. It’s all a big viously he considers himself purer of motive fat bloody red bone tossed to the bear than those ditzy ecotourists and those haters, and the one who threw it was Timo- whipping-boy poachers. If you ask me, thy Treadwell. poaching bears for profit is despicable. That’s more damage to the bears However, Treadwell never actually witness- than your average hunter ever did. Tread- es a poaching or foils any poachers. No, the well’s achievements on his own behalf are question of what Treadwell was doing in notable, but his achievements for the bears Katmai, why he kept going back, why he must be weighed against his destructive- kept upping the stakes, won’t be answered ness. His habit of personifying the bears, for

6 example, is unhelpful. We’re trying to see to live in a wilderness where wild bears are something truly here. We’re grappling with more populous than people. Seeing a bear, the nature of this terrific creature the coast you bristle with uncanny sensations. These grizzly. Personification is the same mecha- frissons originate in a primal moment of nism by which bears are demonized. recognition, of mammalian identification — “Good” personification shares with “bad” bears are big mammals. Ancient time is personification its man-centered bias. Aspir- suddenly pulled through into the present. In ing to become more like a wild grizzly, your solitude, without the props of your Treadwell cheats and asks the bears to be- civilized plunder around you, you may talk come more like people. He seems to wan- to the bears, naturally, and your kinship, at der through a fairy tale. He even sleeps in a first a distant intuition, becomes clearer. bear’s bed like Goldilocks. Sometimes he’s I once had an inflatable boat folded Christopher Robin, looking in on his “fur- inside of a blue tarp and stored on a grassy clad” friends, commiserating with one, rea- bluff over the beach. It was safe for six soning with another, issuing greetings all weeks. On the eve of my inflating the boat around: it’s beautiful. When the bears kick and launching it — my reward for weeks of back and listen to him sing, the only thing labor on the homestead — the bears got to missing is their corncob pipes and straw it. In the morning I found my boat a hun- hats. dred yards away, riddled with punctures. For the bears, it was play, a mama bear teaching her cub how to maul, haul, bag and drag. They left two scat piles, a mama pile and a baby pile. I was furious. The boat was heavy, they had dragged it through the grass like a carcass. Malicious animals! It spooked me, peering through the tall sur- rounding grasses. Take the fear and wonder which the wild bears excite in you, and add

a memorable coincidence like their attack- ing your boat on the day you meant to put In a sense it’s difficult to write about it in the water — that’s how superstition animals without anthropomorphizing them arises in the mind. because we use human language. You’ve Again, if you flip the coin of anthro- got to be as rigorously honest as you can. pomorphism, beware the second side. I find You’ve got not to rely on the old senti- it hard to believe that Alaska’s brown bears mental fixes. Bears aren’t “peaceful” any are “concerned” about living in harmony on more than they’re “dangerous.” They are the earth. “Can we learn from them and what they are. People try to sum them up in make a better earth?” Treadwell asks. “I a word or two — shy, oafish, unpredictable, don’t know,” I reply. “I’m willing to consider aggressive, curious, but the bears have no it. Show me.” I look at what Treadwell one true nature. Certainly their faces are shows me in page after page of bear behav- expressive like a dog’s or a primate’s. And ior. At first I accept their behavior for what they learn quickly. In might and in poise it is, on its own terms, without judging it, they are awesome. It’s a strange experience satisfied to know it is purposive, has roots

7 deep in biologic time. But once I start think- men settle for testing themselves digitally. ing in normative human terms, once But Treadwell stalked the truth and Treadwell gets me wondering can we found changed himself in the process. He reveled our new order on the ursine constitution, I in his freedom, knew moments of real joy in have to admit a lot of bear behavior is un- the company of bears. He was doing it! pretty and even offensive. We have words Delving into the secret ways of brown bears for such behavior. Bears waste food when and transforming himself into a brown bear they have plenty of it, they’re thieves, too. they’re bullies, they’re patriarchal authori- Treadwell pursues his passion with tarians — and that’s apart from any charge such obstinacy that an inner fatality seems of infanticide. If this is living in harmony on to be at work in him. Words like “rush” and the earth, I’d say we have grounds for op- “euphoria” serve to describe the thrilling timism! effect on him of an early bear encounter. Rushes and euphorias are peculiar things. They are pleasant and worth probing the 9 secrets of. Push button, stimulate brain, oh yes. Bears are Treadwell’s natural high. He As a child Timothy Treadwell quits the hopeless stuff, the dope, the yearned for the innocence and freedom he booze, in exchange for what the bears of was sure wild animals possessed. He Katmai give him, the uplift of a moral mis- donned imaginary claws and fangs and pre- sion, the acceptance of a love which the tended he was a grizzly bear. Later, after his odious brutal human world doesn’t want or sordid early adulthood and his near death deserve, and those endless summer trips, from drugs, Treadwell, longing for escape, oh yes, that neurochemical roulette of fear revives these early fantasies. He wants to and relief that will spin him through the fi- be a grizzly, “roaming the great north.” He nal transformation he longs for. travels to Alaska and emerges as an en- A high is a high is a high. Treadwell raged defender of the faith of his childhood. kept having it and wanting more of it, and Alaska offers him the space to enact he had to keep going back to the source to his quest. From self-loathing through oblite- get it, to get the peak feelings and increas- ration and transformation to healing and ingly to maintain his celebrity. And so he let wholeness, another young American strides his fans down by lying to us. Promised he into the country to discard and find himself, would quit playing matador with the bears, to challenge and overcome himself, to turn quit getting in their faces, but he didn’t. his back on a nation of drones and marry Couldn’t. Bears were his final addiction, and the virgin wilderness. it killed him, as he knew it would, as he ear- Treadwell is heartily sick of human nestly kept proving to himself it wouldn’t. beings, sick to death of us. After the trials of To face down the grizzlies was to face down his personal life, no one is going to tell him his demons, and if grizzlies weren’t the de- what’s right or possible. God love him for an mons of popular culture, then his own de- outlaw and a dreamer. And he did it! Yes, mons weren’t fatal or irrevocable. He would he was doing it. What most people only face them down, all of them — again and dream of. Walt Disney gets paid good mon- again and again. ey to stimulate our Eden sensors. Young

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10 the dynamics on the ground? Did he not see that in doubling the human population he Here’s an early self-portrait of Timo- was enacting in small the drama of en- thy Treadwell: “I decided to behave like the croachment that’s been our history on this bears, and dropped to all fours. I was trans- continent? Maybe he figured he was a big forming, going through a metamorphosis. I boar now and must act the part by having a felt wild and free.” steady around. Oh, he justified it somehow. If only saying it made it so! Tread- But he knew it was wrong. well feels “at one with the grizzlies.” Later, And so we always come down. We “I was honored, and really felt like a griz- always come back to ourselves. When did zly.” Still later, “I moved among them at the spell end? How did the charm wear off? will, feeling like a bear myself.” Metamor- Why did he fall? What freak mistake or phosis turns out to be a drawn-out process, failed bluff, what driving fate, reduced him a thing of fits and starts. What he means in the end to what he became — not a bear, when he says he feels like a bear is that he not a savior, but a provocation, a bear’s feels the way he believes he’d feel if he prey, a meal? October can be a bitter were a bear of the sort he believes bears to month in bear country. be. Years pass. Late in the book he’s still at it: “I was beginning to feel like a real griz- zly.” His transformation is always under way 11 but the hair on his toes never thickens. How stubborn the human personality! In the Metamorphoses Actaeon is Did he get weary, waiting? Kind of the princely hunter who penetrates to the upsets your momentum when you have to woodland lair of the patron goddess Diana keep packing up and returning to Malibu. and sees her naked. In punishment she Kind of hard to be wild when the satellite turns him into a stag. He who presumes on phone rings in your fanny pack and the divinity shall be stripped of his humanity. camera batteries need swapping. Treadwell Actaeon’s beloved hunting dogs see him was plugged into the media machine and only as a stag now and they attack their that’s a monster with an appetite. He must master and tear him to pieces. Actaeon’s have passed some dispiriting moments final agony is to know what is happening to looking around at his camping gear donated him and be helpless to stop it. He calls out by corporations some of whose executives but they no longer know him. were bad-ass hunters. Had he betrayed Ovid, the poet, blames the misad- himself? The bears? venture on destiny, saying that Actaeon on- Why was Amie Huguenard in Katmai ly “lost his way,” hardly a sin deserving of with him? His method was emphatically such a punishment. Actually, Ovid leaves supposed to be solitary and low impact. His the question wide open, knowing that “los- stated priority was to respect the wishes of ing one’s way” comprehends a thousand the animals. Did he think they wanted more degrees of culpability. people around? Did he think the presence Timothy Treadwell showed us that of another human, in this case a female with desire and courage and the gift of his with the particular scents of her body, the love a man may do remarkable things. He pitch of her voice, didn’t radically change believed that his finest gift to the animals

9 was his unconditional love for them. But this was also his gift to us. It’s easy to for- give Treadwell his baloney and to disregard his inconsistencies because in the good things he yearned for, the peace, the wholeness, we know what he meant. We want what he wanted. If, as the bears taught him, “living complete and in the moment was what mattered,” then Treadwell won his victory many times over. He was keen on the no- tion of truth, and indeed he died for the truth. He died telling the whole truth. He would make himself master of the myster- ies and reveal them to the world and be saved by them. In his ambition, his pride, his capacity for self-deception, Timothy Treadwell was supremely human when he thought he was being least so. He died all man. And what happened to him after- ward I cannot tell you. But the great bears of Katmai never saw anything more of him again.

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