After the end of Alaska's 1999 legislative session one of my friends in Juneau asked if I and a guest would be interested in joining her in checking out the bear sanctuary at Pack Creek on Admiralty Island before I left for the year. She is a licensed guide allowed to take people into the sanctuary. I jumped at the opportunity knowing it was likely a once in a lifetime chance to view bears acting normally in their natural habitat. Besides, the floatplane trip would be fun even if we didn't see any bears. Well, from the pictures you can see we obviously saw bears. The pictures here are some of the best of the batch I took that day.

Peggy (my gracious friend), Theo, Juli, and I did have an adventure that day. We were quietly viewing 6 bears nibbling on sedges in the salt marsh when Peggy whispered to us to keep an eye on the closest two juveniles. She said that adult bears predate on youngsters and in this sanctuary young bears know that humans will protect and defend the viewing platform.

Well ... just as she finished her explaination of this unusual bear behaviour an old boar wandered out of the woods. He spied the two three year old younsters and decided he'd had enough of teenagers. He went from a slow walk to a full bear gallop in the blink of an eye. The teenage bears saw this and made an immediate and frantic beeline to the viewing platform.

I must digress and mention the bear viewing platform at Pack Creek is merely a gravel pad maybe 200 feet by 100 feet with two logs in the middle for perching one's bum on. Now back to the story.

These two young bears blew through our position and passed on both sides of our party no more than 50 feet away. Four very alarmed humans had grabbed their packs and huddled together in an attempt to appear as big as possible. The mature boar was thundering up by this time and finally saw us. At this point I was wondering in my mind:

• if I could outrun any of my companions.
• how loud his thundering footsteps where.
• what a great Alaskan death this was going to be.

He turned to look at four very worried humans and snarled in frustration with foam dripping from his lips. He contemplated the unusually colored beast in front of him and pondered. This gave the youngsters a chance to escape ... which was their plan from the first. All parties awaited his decision ... and he finally decided he had defended his honor and walked away in a "cowboy" walk. Four humans gave a collective sigh of relief.