When I was in my early twenties I had had enough of working as a technician at my old art college and I knew that I was destined for a more important life. One evening after an endless day I found myself on the sofa in front of the television watching a natural history programme. It concerned a fig tree that had evolved a relationship with a tiny wasp and the two lived in harmony. The wasp pollinated the tree's flowers and the figs stored the wasp's eggs. This made for an entire programme because there were many other creatures that benefited from the exchange between the wasp and the tree and the narrator suggested that it was perhaps the most important tree in the jungle and so therefore the most important exchange. I watched the animals that fed on figs and I saw the enormous foot of an elephant move the soil and the way that it's trunk wrapped around the branches laden with figs and tore them down with ease. The desire to become an animal overwhelmed me and the sadness of understanding that this could never happen gave me a heavy head. I went to bed.
The next day at work I spent some time reading in the library during my lunch break and stumbled across a book about bears there. It was inscribed by a young boy named Peter, who had written 'Dear Diggory, Happy Birthday. I knew that you would know what to do." It seemed strange to me that there was a book in the library that had apparently been bought from a second hand bookshop or a charity shop. I thought that libraries bought only new books and had to keep them in the best possible condition. Perhaps Peter, whoever he was, had stolen the book from the library and gifted it to his friend Diggory who had the sense to return it.
All this is beside the point. The book inspired me to leave my job and move to Canada.
I spent a long time organising everything before I left. I took on other jobs after leaving the college in an effort to earn enough money for my emigration of sorts. To travel such a great distance is expensive and leaving my family and friends behind me in England was not easy. They gave me so much support and they understood why I had to go there. I had to experience this before carrying on with my life. Also the excitement of planning the move was something that everyone involved was able to enjoy. It made our relationship strengthen and at a big dinner party the day before I left we all exchanged stories about our lives.
The journey involved a series of exhausting flights, first across the Atlantic Ocean to Montreal, then hopping across Canada to the Northwest Territories and finally ending in Fort Simpson. I had written to the town council on several occasions and they had found a place for me to stay and managed to get me a job at a local self serve store. I felt at home in Fort Simpson immediately.
My hosts were an old couple who strangely bore a strong resemblance to my mother and father. Their names were Elam and Reader Stonehouse, they had lived in Fort Simpson all of their lives and never thought to go anywhere else. Elam and Reader were teachers at the elementary school and I visited them there sometimes for a show and tell with their classes. The children were amused by my patterned jumpers and my height. Fort Simpson is a town with 1200 inhabitants and sits on an island formed where the Mackenzie River and the Liard River meet. It is situated within the Nahanni National Park Reserve, which was named as a World Heritage Site in 1978; I chose Fort Simpson because of this, knowing somehow that I would find bears there.
The local people enjoyed my company and I enjoyed theirs. For the first four months of being there I met just about everyone, since everyone used the store that I worked in and if they did not then I delivered to their houses. I rode around the town on a bike with two baskets, one on the back and one on the front. It was an exciting time learning about the town and the reserve. As I became more familiar with my surroundings I ventured further into the woods. I desperately wanted to understand the local wildlife. It was nearing the end of the summer and the light was beginning to fade in the night. When I first saw a bear it was about six o'clock in the morning and I was two hours into a long walk along the Mackenzie. I had stopped to take a drink from my flask. He was young and inexperienced, madly jumping at fish that were swimming upstream to spawn there and though I had seen film of this activity before I was left breathless by the sight of it. The bear chased the fish around and sometimes jumped from a high rock into deep water. At some point he must have smelt me in the air because he disappeared all of a sudden.
After this first sighting I learned how to track them and how to keep out of their way also. I could get very close and as winter approached more bears came to the river, slowly moving up stream with the salmon, and filling themselves with the fatty fish. Often they only ate the finest portions of the fish and other animals would come to eat the remains. They were not always so fussy and wasteful. They ate grass and berries from trees still in season and I liked to watch them trying to catch flying insects and mice. The biggest bear I saw, a bore, was two metres tall, at least.
Slowly but surely the bears became scarce as they bedded down for the winter. One of Elam's pupils explained to me that the bears do not hibernate in the traditional sense but are sleeping lightly. He told me that his father had stumbled upon a sleeping bear once whilst out hunting. He was walking near its den and woke it up because he was smoking a cigarette. The smell angered the bear and it chased the man who had instinctively run away. This was the wrong thing to do according to the boy who seemed to know an awful lot. He told me that bears can run as fast as 35 miles per hour and could easily out run any man. Knowing that the bear would catch up with him easily the boy's father loaded his gun in flight. He turned on the bear as they passed through some brush and shot it in the neck and chest. The bear was killed instantly but momentum kept it moving forward until it struck the man with the full weight of its body, crushing his legs and snapping most of his ribs. As the bear lay dead and bleeding on top of him in the freezing cold the man fired his gun and blew a whistle to call attention to himself. Luckily his hunting party found him before any wolves did. I heard a lot of similar stories to his and though I listened to the advice given to me I knew that to get closer to the bears I would eventually have to break some of the rules.
I had been away from home a long time and my experiences in Fort Simpson were so inspiring. I needed to return to England to tell everyone what I had seen. My parents loaned me the money for the flights and I arrived home in time for the Christmas and New Year celebrations. I made the effort to visit as many people as I could and tell them all about it. Some of them wanted to see photos but after hearing me speak so earnestly about the forest and the bears they were able to imagine the whole adventure, as they put it, for themselves. After all the retelling of tales I was ready to return to Canada. I said goodbye once again.
The flights back this time seemed effortless, almost enjoyable and a small welcoming party was waiting at the dock. I got straight back into my routine and while the bears slept during January and the beginning of February I spent a lot of my time in the library reading more about the Northwest Territories and the history of Fort Simpson. I was glad to be there and I knew that this was where I wanted to be.
In the middle of February I began spending more time in the forest. There were only a few hours of sunlight each day. I finished working at the shop so that I could concentrate on walking further into the wilderness. I slept in the forest on my own, only returning to the town every two or three days. On my final excursion I prepared myself for a week�s camping and set off early Monday morning after a restful Sunday. During this time the bears were beginning to come out of their slumber but returning to their winter dens to sleep. I tracked them during the day and mapped the location of their dens. Eventually I found a suitable location to set up camp and then on the fourth night a brown bear came to me. I had sensed him stalking around the clearing for a long time. He stared at me through the trees until eventually finding the courage to come and talk. He was a large bear, probably about twenty five years old but he seemed thin and withdrawn due to a lack of food. I knew that he was more afraid of me than I of him, as they always say. We spoke for nearly an hour. He told me that he had been asleep for two months. I talked about my family and all of the problems that had led me to this place. It took him some time to become accustomed to the crackling of the fire and the exploding flames but he relished the moths that were attracted to the light and caught them in his huge paws. He asked me to try one and I did. He was not offended by my disgust and he laughed as I scraped the fluff and powder off my tongue. The warmth of the fire comforted him and he sat upright with his legs crossed like me. The orange glow of the fire lit the surrounding trees and kept other predators away. I would have told him everything. Eventually I knew that it was time and so I removed my clothes and lay down in front of him. He struck my back with one blow that broke my spine. Then he tore me apart with his long black claws and savoured my blood dripping through his teeth and around his dry hungry tongue. I imagined as I waited for the pain to cease and for my life to end how wonderful it must feel to eat after such a long time and I was glad that it was me, my flesh, that helped him to recover from his winter sleep. The meal gave him a good start for the year ahead and his strength grew beyond comparison in the reserve. His confidence and size won him several mates and his offspring now thrive throughout the Northwest Territories.