The nation has been captured by stories of atmospheric rivers slamming California. Extreme storms are unusual in the southwest but are a regular weather phenomenon in Alaska. Not this winter; rather we’ve been under massive high-pressure systems for months. The kind of brutally cold air mass that deflected our normal storms south, to the golden bear state.
In last month’s post I wrote of my favorite rivers, with the top of the list, The Iliamna River in Alaska. Our family owns acreage on a bluff above the river and a rustic log cabin. We use the cabin for fishing, hiking, bear watching, and bird and moose hunting in the fall. When a massive storm rolls in, the river can go from thirty yards across to a quarter mile and from three feet of water to thirty. The rise can happen in minutes. Watching massive trees and sections of riverbank roar by is an amazing experience. The river can also recede almost as quickly.
I recall one instance when it rose so fast that it submerged an old dirt road and bridge over the river, leaving me stuck on the wrong side. I parked the old beat-up Blazer I was driving and waited near the roaring flood for some friends to run a boat over to pick me up. After a night of roughing it in the cabin with six buddies, listening to 100 mile an hour winds slam sheets of rain against the walls, we awoke the next day to clear skies. (By roughing it, I mean finding that we only had red wine to go with a baked salmon dinner.)
We watched the river recede all of the next day and about six in the evening I pulled on a pair of hip boots and headed to the river. Knowing the moose and bears in the area were all stirred up by the flood, I slung my rifle over my shoulder. With the water within an inch of the boot tops, I began wading through the floodwaters, determined to recover the vehicle as soon as I could drive it across the flooded road. Being careful not to go over the tops of the boots or trip on a rock or sunken log carried by the floods, it took a half hour to reach a stand of submerged cottonwood trees on the far side of the meadow next to the river.
As I started through the narrow roadway between the soaring trees, a branch snapped to my left, and then several more. With water to my boot tops, and deeper water to either side, there was no place to go, so I slid behind a huge cottonwood tree and waited. The occasional snap became a steady crunch of breaking limbs. Unsure whether it was a brown bear or moose coming through the flooded forest, I slid my rifle from my shoulder and loaded a shell into the chamber. (Whether bear or moose is irrelevant as either can kill you if you get too close.)
For five minutes I froze behind my tree as something huge moved closer. Then only fifteen feet away a four-year-old grizzly broke through a brush line, headed straight for me. The half lunging, half swimming bear had no idea I was there. I put my rifle to my shoulder and prepared to shoot; even if the bear just knocked me down, I’d drown. The bear's nose slid around the tree and then the head. He looked at me and growled, a look of total surprise on his face.
Given about two seconds to make a decision, I lowered the rifle and slammed the bear on the nose with the barrel. You would have thought a bulldozer was running amuck through the cottonwoods as branches, brush and even small trees were thrown up where the bear ripped his way out of the forest. I waited a couple of minutes and then waded to dry ground. Sitting in the truck, I watched the water recede and rejoiced in the outcome of the encounter.
This winter, reading about the California situation, it occurred to me that if the early California settlers had given the bears a little respect, there might still be golden bears in the golden bear state. It also occurred to me that they, with some infrastructure rework, might be able to use a few of these weather phenomena. We won’t miss one or two.