We have been talking a lot about bears lately. Most recently in “Where’s the Park, Papa?” Patrick McManus tells us:
The park bears aren’t what they used to be either. Most of the bears you see along the roads look as if they’ve spent the past five years squatted in a chair before a television set drinking beer and eating corn chips. Half of them should be in intensive care units. They have forgotten what it is that a bear is supposed to do. If panhandling along the roads were outlawed, they would probably hustle pool for a living. A dose of pure air would drop them like a shot through the heart from a .44 Magnum. Any bear that wanders more than a mile from the road has to carry a scuba tank on his back filled with carbon monoxide. As far as spectacle goes, the bears just don’t have it anymore. I’d rather drive my kids across town to watch their uncle Harry nurse a hangover. Now there’s a spectacle!
Now I am as big a McManus fan as any of you — after all I did assign his book! But do not expect to find those anemic, pampered bears in the parks today. Yes, there was a time when tourists routinely fed bears from cars in places like Yellowstone. Tourists used to sit on bleachers and watch the bears come in for nightly garbage feeding under stage lights. And at one time a captured bear was chained to a post outside a lodge at Yellowstone for tourist viewing. But all of those spectacles have long since been abolished, and bears have been discouraged from visiting campgrounds.
A few years ago I was in Yellowstone with my daughter and granddaughter, and we saw a modern park bear. I took the film below documenting the scene. What are your thoughts on this “encounter”? In what ways is that bear “the real deal”? Is that bear doing his or her “own thing.” What is the impact on our bear experience when we “share” it with other folks, cars, and park rangers? (BTW, the bear did not dive into the river and swim across!)