How to Stay Alive in the Alaskan Wilderness

I used to have a healthy fear of bears.

But the thing is, bears are like anybody else - just trying to do their thing, to get by. Maybe get a little joy of out of life like the rest of us.

I discovered this the summer I turned 40. Before then, I was just as wary as everybody else. But then, I didn’t know the secret.

I grew up here in Alaska, the rugged Last Frontier, where wildlife is a part of life. We get moose in the backyard, eagles on the telephone poles. Sometimes a fox or two will sneak in through an open window. No big deal.

Well, except foxes are messy little buggers. They once destroyed a whole 24-pack of toilet paper my wife had left in the downstairs pantry – it looked like a pack of drunk frat boys tried to both decorate with and eat the stuff. Foxes are damn smart too; they can pop a six-pack of beer like it was nothing and still open a locked sliding glass door after drinking three six-packs.

But Alaskans do respect our bears. I mean, they’re huge, for one thing. We’re talking MASSIVE. Your average male grizzly weighs more than a full-sized pickup and has teeth that could poke a hole in a hubcap like it was a juice box. Don’t even get me started on those claws – they’re bigger than most people’s whole fingers.

But you want to know the secret. I can see it in your eyes.

Alright. Here’s the deal.

Bears are hypnotized by chocolate. I mean, they’re crazy for it. Give a bear some chocolate and you’re friends for life. It’s like they’re instantly addicted to the stuff. Whammo. Carry a Hershey bar in your pocket and you haven’t got a fear in the world.

No, I’m serious. Really.

Okay now you think I’m crazy. I can tell. Coo-coo for cocoa puffs, you’re thinking.

Let me go back to the beginning.

I didn’t normally go hiking with chocolate in my day pack. But my folks had come over for my 40th birthday the night before and my mom had brought this huge chocolate birthday cake, like I was still 8 years old and half the class was coming over for my party. Don’t get me wrong, I do love me some chocolate cake, but after a 12-ounce steak and a baked potato with all the trimmings I didn’t have a lot of room left. And after me and the wife and the kids and mom and dad had all had a piece, we hadn’t even tucked into half of it. So there was me, guilt-packing a hefty slice of chocolate cake in a Tupperware up Archangel Valley trail on a gorgeous summer day.

The thing about turning 40 is that your mind still thinks you can hike Archangel Valley, easy-peasy. Your knees know the real truth and so does your lower back. And that steak and potato meal the night before didn’t exactly give me the boost of energy I’d hoped for. By the time I’d reached the grassy summit, I was wiped.

I woke up maybe an hour later to a “grupphpf” sound. If you’ve ever heard it, you know what it is, and so do the hairs on the back of your neck. I knew before I even opened my eyes that it was a griz, and a big one. And he was standing there sniffing the air in my direction, less than 10 feet away.

Now, no self-respecting Alaskan goes hiking without bear spray. And I had some, in my day pack. Which I’d been using as a pillow.

I slowly – and I mean slowly – stood up into a half crouching position. The bear stood up too, cocking his head to one side. Still sniffing. He didn’t seem that aggressive, more like curious, but then he made that sound again. I damn near peed my pants. My best plan at this point was to retrieve my cell phone from my daypack and call 911 so they could send a helicopter for my remains. Every bear attack story I’d ever heard was now flooding my brain.

I suppose I could have played dead at this point. But dead people probably don’t make sobbing sounds.

Don’t judge me.

I very slowly reached down and unzipped my day pack. The bear watched.

At this juncture, I’d like to take a moment to offer some important, if unsolicited, advice. If you go hiking with a day pack in bear country, and your day pack has multiple zippered compartments, make damn sure you know which one your bear spray and cell phone are in. Damn sure.

I grabbed my cell phone and flipped it open with my thumb. The top of the Tupperware fell to the ground. In my hand was a delicious piece of chocolate birthday cake with the letters “ppy” and “irth” plainly visible in white frosting.

A lot of things go through your mind when you know you’re going to die. You say the word “shit” a lot.

I mean, what were my options at this point? The bear took a few steps in my direction. I tried to reason with him. “I swear to God, Bear, I won’t taste good! We could pretend this never happened! We can both just walk away from this!” I tried to reason with God, too. Get me out of this God, and I swear I’ll be the perfect human being from now on. I’ll go to church – every day if you want. I’ll never swear, steal, or lie. Whatever you say, man. PLEASE.

I think it is a basic part of human nature to throw things as a form of self-defense. We just throw things. We do. If I was facing a tornado, I’d probably throw a sandwich at it. You probably would too. So when the bear got about five feet away from me, I did the most logical thing I could think of. I threw chocolate cake at it.

I’ll be damned if that bear didn’t look offended. He literally moved back a foot and sat down.

Now, anyone in their right mind would have beat feet out of there at that moment. You rarely get a head start against a bear, and in the back of my mind I acknowledged that. But curiosity killed the damn cat, and there is not a more curious sight in the entire world than a giant-ass grizzly bear staring at you with his mouth open in utter disbelief at the rudeness of the common man.

I mean, I was taken aback. But he was not wrong. So … I apologized.

“I’m sorry man,” I said. “But, I mean, you scared the crap out of me.”

The bear raised an eyebrow. Yes, bears have eyebrows, of course they do. Don’t be stupid.

Then the bear looked pointedly at the cake on the ground, scattered in kind of a trail, covered in dirt and grass and half covered by the bottom of the Tupperware container.

“Yeah,” I said. “It was my birthday yesterday. Forty years old, can you believe it?”

The bear shook his head.

“I mean, it creeps up on you so fast, you know? And my mom, she made this beautiful chocolate cake and all, but we just could not eat the whole damn thing after dinner. Steak and potatoes – all those carbs, I just can’t do it anymore. But you know moms, they just guilt you. It’s like their superpower or something. I’m 40 years old and she still … anyway, so I brought this birthday cake with me today planning to eat it up on the summit. I don’t know what I was thinking …”

I was rambling, but the bear nodded sympathetically.

“At least she’ll never see this right?”

I giggled, my eyes filling with tears. I do that sometimes, when I’m under extreme stress. I laugh and cry at the same time. It’s really embarrassing.

The bear moved forward, sniffing the air above the cake. Then with the tip of his nose, he flipped the bottom of the Tupperware over. The cake stayed on the ground, glued there by frosting. The bear looked at me questioningly.

“Oh! My gosh, please! By all means. How rude of me – of course, be my guest,” I said.

If it surprises you that a multi-ton animal with the approximate dimensions of a tiny house can move with grace and delicateness, don’t feel bad. It surprised me as well. But size discrimination in our society is alive and well, and we should all strive to do better.

The bear took a small bite out of the corner of the slice, daintily, using the very edge of his teeth. Now I believe this to be a universal truth: the corner of a slice of any round food item – pizza, cake, cheese - is the best-tasting part. In any case, the bear sat back on his haunches. His eyes got wide. He licked his lips. He said, “oh.”

Yes he did. At least in bear language. Some words are basically the same in both.

It occurred to me that I’ve never really appreciated my mother’s cooking. She really is quite amazing in the kitchen. It vowed to tell her so if I ever got out of this alive.

The bear then sat with his paws folded politely in front of him. It took me a moment to realize what he wanted.

“Oh my goodness, of course! Please! I’m still stuffed from last night. Understand, I have more at home. MUCH more. So please go ahead,” I said.

The bear cocked his head.

“I’m dead serious,” I said.

Poor choice of words, I admit.

The bear took another bite, and I will say, less delicately. He said, “Mmmmmmm,” and rolled over on his back.

Have you ever seen a dog wag his whole body? Now imagine them doing it on their back. Now make it a bear.

This was one happy bear.

By this point my blood pressure had dropped down from you’re-about-to-have-a-stroke to near normal levels. My breathing had slowed, and I was no longer hyperventilating. I was beginning to believe that I might just walk out of this in one piece.

Eventually I sat on the ground and crossed my legs while the bear finished the cake and licked the remaining frosting off the grass.

I offered him a sip of orange Gatorade but he declined. I don’t think bears are a huge fan of orange.

Finally, we walked most of the way back down the trail together. We talked about Russian literature and the failings of modern capitalism (bears tend to run rather liberal, apparently) and debated whether silver salmon or red is the best tasting (silver, hands down). We parted ways a few hundred yards from the trailhead when the bear picked up the scent of another group of hikers. He told me his name, but it is not something humans can pronounce easily. He practically died laughing when I attempted it. We settled on “Fred.”

When I got home, after I’d changed my pants and showered, I called my mom. “What do you put in that cake?” I said.

“Oh it’s just an old family recipe – Death By Chocolate. Baking chocolate, milk chocolate, and more chocolate,” she said. “Did you like it dear?”

“Mom,” I said. “We ALL loved it. Promise me you’ll make it for me every year.”

She did.

These days, I go up into the hills at least once a year and visit Fred. I always bring a second Tupper with his own piece of cake. Bears don’t mind sharing, but I like to be generous. My wife still thinks I’m crazy.

I mean imagine, a man of my age celebrating birthdays with a cake big enough to feed half a classroom of second graders. Ridiculous.

Or maybe not.

It’s our secret.