20060619 Ho Hum

As can happen anywhere but especially in the remote places where I work, technology does not always cooperate. We’ve been without internet for some days here in Brooks Camp, hence the lack of blog posts. You didn’t miss much.

This time last year brown bears were fishing, fighting, and mating in some number here. This year, some say due to a cold spring season, the salmon run has not yet begun. Soooooo…not many bears in Brooks Camp. (Isn’t that horse already dead?)

This suits the many anglers just fine. They are here to catch-and-release fly fish for giant rainbow trout, not salmon. Moreover, the presence of bears just cramps their style. If a bear comes within 50 yards they must cease fishing. If an angler has a fish on the line when the bear approaches, the angler must break the line.

Visitors not here to fish are less enthused about the lack of bears. They paid considerable sums to get here expecting to see the bear concentration as depicted in some brochure or on some web site. For the past few days many have wandered all day, often in the rain, for a glimpse of a bear or two—if they are lucky. Mostly they seem bored.

They are not alone. Among other duties, we interpreters have been staffing two locations for several days now, often hours at a time. Our job is to keep anglers and pedestrians apprised of bear locations. Last year at this time we would have been busier than we wanted to be. This year, in twelve hours of this duty I have seen a grand total of three bears [please, no Goldilocks jokes]. Today the total was zero.

As a kid in faceless suburbia I would spend hours sitting at the curb in front of our one-of-identical-thousands crackerbox tract home letting my mind wander. One of my favorite pastimes was watching objects flow along with the gutter water. Many an unlucky pill bug was impressed into service as crew on a Popsicle-stick ship. I thrilled to hydrology, constructing grass and mud dams to force the water far out into the street. How long will it take that leaf, on a side trip spinning in an eddy, to finally be set free and continue its journey to the inevitable storm drain?

My mind can wander still. While I am supposed to be vigilant, scanning for bears, my mind takes side trips. At times today’s four-hour stint as sentinel degraded to self-portraits of ennui and last year’s bear scat.

The salmon will come. They always do. The bears will follow. They always do. Any day now I may wish for the quiet and solitude of the past few days, but for now it’s the spinning eddy. Ho hum.