Brandy and her cubs drink in the rivulet at the base of a lingering snowdrift. They are so hot they
pant like dogs.















The heat that no one here is used to this summer make the bears want to be close to snow. The
ever watchful dark cub is ready
to bolt into the alders.

(Click on any Image to see a higher resolution version)

The Gods have finally provided a few nice days so it now takes discipline to sit at my computer, thus the prolonged time between my web site entries.

My trip to Petropavlovsk was a bust. In deciding whether to go or not I probed from several angles through e-mail to gauge the importance of my being at the trial as the witness they wanted. I had some conflicting responses from friends but the Chief prosecutor kept sticking to his word that it was important. Before we left the city in early June, a person from his office had hunted me down to tell me how much they wanted me there. Please come he insisted, even though that office still sees my flying as illegal and that was certainly the only way I was going to get there. I have been here long enough to know it was probably not a trick so that I would not find that the trail was really about my own transgressions with the law of this place. I decided to go.

They have been putting this second try at conviction together for four years to prosecute the director of the South Kamchatka Preserve for his and his friends joy-ride in a huge track vehicle on a poaching spree in the preserve it was his job to protect. I came across them in September 1997 on one of my many flights around the south part of the peninsula. With the help of our friend Igor Revenko, we took a video of them from my aircraft as they climbed over a mountain in their 500 hp machine. It left a 120 kilometer trail of crushed pines and alder that will be visible for a hundred years. This is one of the stories in my book Grizzly Heart, but I have not asked permission from my publisher to excerpt that bit from my hard drive so you will have to wait until spring.

I made the trip and showed up at the court house in the early morning at my appointed time to find out that there was some problem of not having one other witness there. The trial was put off. I must have suspected something like this would invariably happen because it didn't throw me very much, but if they do get their act together someday, I will want some kind of air type limousine and chauffeur to take me the next time. Thinking about the steady sequence of storms we were having, I beat it right back south as fast as I could go and made it here just as another cyclone slammed us from the Sea of Okhotsk.

I had been gone 23 hours, but had I delayed another hour I would not have made it back for another five days. Maureen was not upset at the idea she would have been on her own through one more storm. This tells me how relaxed she is about being isolated. She has not seen another person besides me since we watched the helicopter lift away on June 9th. Maybe it says my company as a cabin partner is wearing thin during these confined times, but she generously contends that it is only her having become so at ease with the idea of isolation that lets her be relaxed being alone here with the bears.

The reason, I was willing to go out of my way to help convict the ex-director was that I hoped the case would serve to demonstrate that there is some seriousness being put towards protecting this place. On that subject, the rangers situated at Kurilskoy Lake and a couple other places within this preserve, are working hard to do their part and are showing us that our experiment of paying them a better wage and buying them some good equipment is paying off. Of course, it is a tricky thing for foreigners to interfere with local pay scales but as things were it was impossible to get people to put up with the hardships encountered living here year around let alone risking ones life trying to deter poaching. I guess that we have earned some credibility from our coming back here over so many years and putting up with hardships ourselves.

Our bears are not doing much right now except enjoying the sun like we are. Brandy's one darker cub is still being very slow at excepting us so we are respecting its shyness and letting things unfold as they will. They are starting to make the rounds of Brandy's home range almost precisely as she has done ever since we first knew her. Some of her range is on the east side of the mountain divide and they disappear over there for a few days at a time, then loop back onto our side again.

Biscuit has monitored the serge of salmon that came into the lake about a week ago but knows that it will be some time yet before they are available to her. She spends most of her time grazing on glob flowers and all the other lush herbs that have suddenly turned the whole seine from the cabin very green. She has come by the cabin to say hello and check things out only once since we arrived six week ago, but we can often see her from here. Late one evening, the wind was blowing very cold and it was alternating from pouring rain that was impossible to see through for more than a few yards, to letting up a bit so I could see the nearest mountainside. I had earlier spotted Biscuit grazing there and set up the spotting scope inside the cabin, so with my back to the fire I could watch during the letups. The window facing her was on the lee side from the storm and almost dry so I could see unobstructed except for the rain. Maureen was lost in her book The Cider House Rulesby John Irving.

As the storm worsened, Biscuit was still carrying on as though there was absolutely nothing wrong with the weather even though it was about as miserable as it could be. The next break in the rain, let me see, she was sitting looking out over the valley as though it was the nicest view in the world. Then she stood up and went back to feeding. I watched until it was too dark to make her out.

- Charlie