Member-only story
Grizzly Bears, Rituals, and the Wilderness of Your True Home
Photographing grizzlies in British Columbia, Canada
October brings death to the forest
Out at sea, the salmon float in silver squadrons, called home to die by a force stronger than them and grander than us. Fat yellow leaves chase the rain to the ground, making the road slick and dangerous, releasing the sweet smell of peat and petrichor, the humus from which we all arise, to which we all return. The rise and fall of the hump on the grizzly bear’s back, the protruding muscle that stinks in the rain and bristles with rage and tears at the roots of the world.
That’s why we came to the Valley.
We came to see bears. The giant coastal grizzlies of Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, one of the world’s last great wildernesses. A place where humans are still rare, but trails are made by bears and deer and wolves, where cougars partner shadows like specters of untimely death, where the sea rolls cold bones to the shore and the salmon rot and die so the trees can grow tall.
We arrived in a cloud of clutch smoke, the brakes on my girlfriend’s car halfway burned out.
That’s not unusual. If you don’t come by boat, you arrive in Bella Coola by way of The Hill. A gravel…
