The wait is over, more from Diane!


So cold. Even for me. Without the wind, about 20 degrees. With the wind—a gazillion below. Hair sheeting horizontally, and then straight up. That cold pain, just like a hot burn. A buggy full of Pillsbury dough boys.

What a great day.

The troops know the drill. In the bus, the short rickety loud drive to Gypsy’s. Line up to order breakfast (yes, Corrine had pie). Off to the wooden table. Tea for the Englanders, cocoa for the French and Swiss, coffee for my countrymen—two cups on the table for me.

Off for the half hour bouncy ride to the buggy station. Even the school bus had trouble rounding the curves. Happy to be at the station, transferring to the buggy. Our driver today is Bill. The weather forecaster. The singer. Who has equipped the phone booth (local for the bathroom) with an outside red light (no jokes please), to avoid unnecessary interruptions.

And we’re off. Speeding (eight mph) to the far eastern part of the tundra, to find cubs, birds and foxes. “We’ll only stop for spectacular bears, so if you can’t see them without binoculars, we’re moving through.” So different from yesterday, when we would stop for anything, no matter how far away, even bear rock (the joke of a “bear” which, on closer view, is just a big rock).

Three hours later, Arthur has cited 9 bear from way afar. But nothing else. We search. And search. And search again. Success. A big male walking across the semi-frozen pond. A delight. And then nothing.

The troops are becoming disgruntled. Steve is uncharacteristically serious. He rails at the film crews parked at various sites. If these crews find a bear, they hone in and surround it (from the allotted road grooves—even they can’t divert from the established “roads”.) “They have no respect for the tundra.” The bear stresses from the invasion. Other bears sense the stress and stay away.

One film crew is from PBS. Another is streaming live footage. Another, which we do not see, has Dan Ackroyd, Rob Reiner and their families enjoying the scene as they film a documentary. Steve is neither star-struck nor otherwise amused.

After consultation with the other buggy drivers, we backtrack and head to another site. This takes an hour. Steve finally smiles. “Look at those beauties.” And the festivities begin.

Had we not had the treasure of yesterday, we would not have had the mental woes of this morning. Had we not had the disappointment of this morning, we would not have had the absolute delight of this afternoon. For during this afternoon, we were treated to hours of huge bears as they sparred, explored our buggy, jumped up our windows, and took a chunk of the buggy’s piping from underneath. That and minestrone for lunch. Couldn’t get any better.

Initially, the bears remained hidden in the willows, so that we could barely make them out. The bears don’t like the wind, even with their furry parkas. So they hunkered down. Eventually, one by one, three big, fat, healthy males wandered to the area near our buggy. Ignoring each other, they did their own thing in their solitary way.

One big guy spent close to an hour digging for something under the tundra’s ice. He looked. Then pawed. Then jumped up and down with those huge front feet. Over and over, until he dislodged a rectangular ice chunk. More sniffing. Bear nose pushing into the hole of the dislodged piece. More paw jumping. Bam. Bam. (I got this on video, but it is a shaky one, since it was so windy on the porch that the slippery railing was no use in steadying the camera).

At the same time, two others were scratching their backs at opposite ends of the buggy. Having tired of his ice play, the third wandered to the closest of the two and began his nudging. Face play. Mouth to mouth, teeth to ear. We thought it looked like the end of a good first date. Steve chided us for reading too many romance novels. I say we haven’t read enough.

And then the games began. The bigger of the big bears started pushing his companion. With his paw! Just like an eight year old! The other bear objected, wanting to lay down, but relented. Paws flying, bears standing on their hinders, boxing without lethal punches. Round after round. The bigger bear pinned the “smaller” one, just like a wrestler, except that he stood with his big bottom sticking up in the air. The pin held for a couple of minutes, until the other bear got himself up and around, and pulled the big guy to the ground. Hidden by the willows, until a big willow rustle. After which the two bears shot up on their hinders and went at it. They would stare at each other just before each round’s silent bell. Half-happy, half-stalking-serious. Totally cool.

As was the buggy. All the upper windows were down. The door to the porch was wide open. A few brave Texans were on the porch, if for only a couple of minutes, their fingers frozen as their cameras clicked. The winds were fierce, like the bear play. Too cool for words.

Eventually, the two parted and layed down in the willows. After a while, the smaller of the two lumbered to the third bear a bit away, again in the willows. This time, the smaller bear started sparring with the third bear.

In the middle of the second sparring match, the big, big bear decided to walk over to the buggy. Slowly, without purpose. Just to see what was up. He circled the buggy’s from half, looking at the tires, the windows, and us. He looked right at me through the front window. Then he sloughed onto the buggy’s side, and jumped right up. One woman was so startled that she clicked on the picture button without realizing it, and ended up with a close up of the bear’s face, his nose smushed against the window.

After using the buggy as a stairmaster, the bear dropped back down to the ground and moved under the buggy. I was right at the front on the right side. We felt a tugging, and the bear walked away from the buggy. With a piece of the buggy in its mouth. A silver intake something. The boor came back for more, and the driver stomped his feet twice, muttering “Not again.” The bear moved out of the bottom of the buggy and looked up through the windshield. The driver told us to move back, because this bear was so big that he could break the windshield if he jumped up onto it. The bear backed off. I wasn’t happy about that.

I glanced to my left, to see the other two bears still sparring. It was like the circus, with the jugglers in one ring and the acrobats in the other. I thought of a takeoff of one the title of one of my favorite plays—I Am My Own Circus.

After the disappointment of the morning, the crowd was going wild. Those unused to winter were on the buggy porch without hats or gloves. The others were either peering out of the pulled-down buggy windows or scrunched up at the buggy’s nose. Even the jaded Steve was howling. The driver of the buggy behind us, frustrated with our find, radioed our driver, telling him that the buggy company’s owner was calling our buggy back to the station. It didn’t work. Steve got on the radio and rubbed it in but good.

Eventually, of course, the blood sugar highs lead to devastating lows. It was time for the bumpy hour trek to return to the station. But not before the three bears (all poppa bears) moved to the tundra buggy lodge just ahead of us and started playing in the wheel area. Steve relented, giving us an extra few minutes, before paternally nudging us back into our seats for the trip home.

That trip was filled with “Did you see that?” and “Can you believe it?”; with the sharing of pictures and videos and, sooner than we would have liked, with the sounds of low snores. And one tiny female English voice—“But we didn’t see any cubs.”

True, we didn’t. But Steve said that we saw more bears in these two days than he had seen thus far this whole season. What lucky ducks.