Grizzly Bear Quotes

Angry grizzly bears are going to look tame next to what is waiting for you at home." I snapped the phone shut and placed it in her waiting hand. "I'm done.

Colin did not laugh. Instead he thought, Tampons have strings? Why? Of all the major human mysteries - God, the nature of the universe, etc. - he knew the least about tampons. To Colin, tampons were a little bit like grizzly bears: he was aware of their existence, but he'd never seen on in the wild, and didn't really care to.

Love is no game. People cut their ears off over this stuff. People jump off the Eiffel Tower and sell all their possessions and move to Alaska to live with the grizzly bears, and then they get eaten and nobody hears them when they scream for help. That’s right. Falling in love is pretty much the same thing as being eaten alive by a grizzly bear.

A conversation with Mabh was like playing tag with a grizzly bear.

The sounds pouring forth from his nasal passages registered somewhere between grizzly bear and exploding tractor trailer.

There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.

We're going to get gored to death by a feral fugging hog and your best strategy is to pretend it's a grizzly bear?

News flash: The whole thing is a huge mess and a giant nightmare and it’s all about to explode in your face and you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. Love is no game. People cut their ears off over this stuff. People jump off the Eiffel Tower and sell all their possessions and move to Alaska to live with the grizzly bears, and then they get eaten and nobody hears them when they scream for help. That’s right. Falling in love is pretty much the same thing as being eaten alive by a grizzly bear. Believe me, I should know.

Most animals show themselves sparingly. The grizzly bear is six to eight hundred pounds of smugness. It has no need to hide. If it were a person, it would laugh loudly in quiet restaurants, boastfully wear the wrong clothes for special occasions, and probably play hockey.

We were like deer. They were like grizzly bear.

You are in trouble,' I said slowly, emphasizing each word. 'Enormous trouble. Angry grizzly bears are going to look tame next to what is waiting for you at home.

You’re not . . . normal, Clara. You try to pretend you are. But you’re not. You talked to a grizzly bear, and it obeyed you. Birds follow you like a Disney cartoon, or haven’t you noticed? And for a while after you came back from Idaho Falls, Wendy thought you were on the run from someone or something. You’re good at everything you try. You ride a horse like you were born in the saddle, you ski perfect parallel turns your first time on the hill, you apparently speak fluent French and Korean and who knows what else. Yesterday I noticed that your eyebrows kind of glitter in the sun. And there’s something about the way you move, something that’s beyond graceful, something that’s beyond human, even. It’s like you’re . . . something else.

Unwisely, Santa offered a teddy bear to James, unaware he had been mauled by a grizzly earlier this year.

Over Kyle's shoulder she could see grandpa, looking like a cross between a grizzly bear and a giant pissed-off blowfish.

The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild; He has devoured the infant child. The infant child is not aware It has been eaten by a bear." "Infant Innocence

My favorite animal in the park is the grizzly, icnonic, graceful, and with eyes that seem to know, and what they know is sad.

Lightning struck, a hawk cried in fury, and then a goddamned grizzly bear fell out of the night sky and onto Ethniu’s head. Don’t care how Titanic you are. No one expects an orbital-drop grizzly.

Snowplows kill twice as many Canadians as grizzly bears do.

So hell, maybe we just killed the last grizzly in the world. I'd feel bad about that if it hadn't been an infected zombie bear that wanted to eat my delicious flesh.

Because of their DNA, most men loved a damsel in distress. Every time a man sees a pretty lass in trouble, even the boorish slob-of-a-man transforms into a chivalrous knight-in-shining-armour. This was why most women (no matter how strong, competent or resourceful) were forced to act shy, demure and helpless so that their men could feel like strong grizzly bears or ferocious mountain lions.

The problem is that bears are pretty smart and humans aren't: we'll move into a remote area and leave a bag of dog food on our front porch and then panic when we see a grizzly bear helping himself to a meal. p 41

On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness The tusks which clashed in mighty brawls Of mastodons, are billiard balls. The sword of Charlemagne the Just Is Ferric Oxide, known as rust. The grizzly bear, whose potent hug, Was feared by all, is now a rug. Great Caesar's bust is on the shelf, And I don't feel so well myself.

I was having dinner…in London…when eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about “Your country’s never been invaded.” And so I said, “Let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying 'Cheerio.' Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.

To Colin, tampons were a little bit like grizzly bears; he was aware of their existence, but he 'd never seen one in the wild, and didn't really care to.

They emblazoned the cotton with the words “California Republic.” Above that they drew a star and what they intended to be the figure of a grizzly bear. Then they ran the flag up the pole. The Mexican Californians who had gathered around, suddenly foreigners in their own land, looked up, pondered it silently, and wondered why the Americans had chosen a pig as the symbol of their ascension to power. The

I will raise you like my own,” I promised the tiny basil pot that day. “I will give you sunlight, I will give you water, I will give you love.” “I will eat your limbs,” my girlfriend helpfully added rubbing her belly and licking her lips like a grizzly bear gazing up at a sticky beehive in a tall pine tree.

There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose.

Tom Dancer’s gift of a whitebark pine cone You never know What opportunity Is going to travel to you, Or through you. Once a friend gave me A small pine cone- One of a few He found in the scat Of a grizzly In Utah maybe, Or Wyoming. I took it home And did what I supposed He was sure I would do- I ate it, Thinking How it had traveled Through that rough And holy body. It was crisp and sweet. It was almost a prayer Without words. My gratitude, Tom Dancer, For this gift of the world I adore so much And want to belong to. And thank you too, great bear

Teddy bears, not grizzly bears, get invited in for honey.

Earth can be bad for your health too. On land, grizzly bears want to maul you; in the oceans, sharks want to eat you. Snowdrifts can freeze you, deserts dehydrate you, earthquakes bury you, volcanoes incinerate you. Viruses can infect you, parasites suck your vital fluids, cancers take over your body, congenital diseases force an early death. And even if you have the good luck to be healthy, a swarm of locusts could devour your crops, a tsunami could wash away your family, or a hurricane could blow apart your town. So the universe wants to kill us all.

She leaned into me, and I could feel her hot breath against my ear. 'I want you to eat me,' she whispered. 'I want you to eat me like you’re an angry Alaskan grizzly and I’m Timothy Treadwell.

Caden’s kinda…” She hesitated. “Overwhelming, isn’t he?” “What do you mean?” He was a big teddy bear to me now. Well, a hot and delicious teddy bear that wasn’t a teddy bear. He was more of a grizzly bear. No, not even that. What was I thinking? He was a damned panther, but I could hope one day he’d turn into a teddy bear. Much safer.

It simply dazzled her how he went from goofy bear, rolling on his back and playing with his toes, and right into sexy-beyond-belief Jersey grizzly who’d worked her body like a love god.

You’re late,” came a deep snarl from inside. It might have belonged to a person or a linguistically gifted grizzly bear. “Sounds like the general is in a good mood,” Theron said, opening the door before Andie could decide if he was being slightly sarcastic or incredibly sarcastic.

Why didn't the Eskimo keep it?" she asked, looking at the Magnet with interest. "He got tired of being loved and longed for some one to hate him. So he gave me the Magnet and the very next day a grizzly bear ate him." "Wasn't he sorry then?" she inquired. "He didn't say," replied the shaggy man,

OCTAVIUS. Even if it were so—and I don't admit it for a moment—it is out of the deadliest struggles that we get the noblest characters. TANNER. Remember that the next time you meet a grizzly bear or a Bengal tiger, Tavy. OCTAVIUS. I meant where there is love, Jack. TANNER. Oh, the tiger will love you.

place. Less than 1 percent of the area is managed for wildlife habitat protection. Where early travelers saw sharp-tailed grouse, bison, bighorn sheep, grizzly bears, numerous beaver and even wolverines, today they see dust, feral horses, and noxious weeds including cheatgrass, halogeton and Russian thistle.

And wow…was that a lot of perfection to look at. Seven feet and three hundred and fifty pounds of perfection. While most guys—most guys being her brother, cousins, and uncles—would be lapping this up—pocketing numbers, getting girls to strip, and playing “who can get my kilt to rise”—Lock looked more like a bear cub cornered by hungry grizzly males. But what exactly did he expect in that outfit? She didn’t want to imply he was asking for it but…he kind of was!

The MRI has a repertoire of noises that resemble, in no particular order: a game-show buzzer for a wrong answer, urgent knocking, a modem from 1992, a grizzly-bear growl, and a man with a raspy voice shouting what sounds like "mother cooler!

Soon the grizzly was joined by a brown bear, a sun bear, and a beaver suffering from an identity crisis of magnificent proportion

I'd fight a bear for you, you know? Not a grizzly, or brown bear … or a koala … But like a Care Bear? I'd fight one of those sonsabitches for you. ;)

If you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly.

It would be fitting, I think, if among the last man made tracks on earth would be found the huge footprints of the great brown bear.

But if you think your deadline is real, go out in the woods and get a grizzly bear to chase you. Which of your pressing concerns seems more real now?

Well, Katie Rodgers, a little exercise never hurt anyone.” “Other than people who have heart attacks, get hit by buses, or get attacked by grizzly bears.

You are in trouble,” I said slowly, emphasizing each word. “Enormous trouble. Angry grizzly bears are going to look tame next to what is waiting for you at home.

Calling Mackenzie a "mean girl" is an understatement. She's a GRIZZLY BEAR with a French manicure and blonde hair extensions

What had happened to him that he was more scared of a human alpha than a grizzly bear?

Dude," said Hassan softly. "Khanzeer." (Arabic:Pig) "Matha, al-khanazeer la yatakalamoon araby?" Colin asked. (Arabic: What, pigs don't speak Arabic?" "That's no pig," answered Hassan in Enlgish. "That's a goddamned monster." The pig stopped its rotting and looked up at them. "I mean. Wilbur is a fugging pig. Babe is a fugging pig. That thing was birthed from the loins of Iblis." (Arabic: Satan) It was clear now the pig could see them. Colin could see the black in its eyes. "Stop cursing. The feral hog shows a remarkable understanding of human speech, especially profane speech," he mumbled, quoting from the book. "That's a bunch of bullshit," Hassan said, and then the pig took two lumbering steps towards them, and Hassan said, "Okay. Or not. Fine. No cursing. Listen. Satan Pig. We're cool. We don't want to shoot you. The guns are for show, dude." "Stand up so he knows we're bigger than he is," Colin said. "Did you read that in the book?" Hassan asked as he stood. "No, I read it in a book about grizzly bears." "We're gonna get gored to death by a feral fugging hog and your best strategy is to pretend it's a grizzly bear?

For most of the past century, your odds of being killed by a cougar were about the same as your odds of being killed by a filing cabinet. Snowplows kill twice as many Canadians as grizzly bears do.

A lot of that, "Have you ever noticed that [specific Florida player] is like the [dated cultural reference] version of [obscure player from the middle 1980s] except that his [some ridiculous stoner concept about grizzly bears] has been filtered through the political ideology of [random indie artist currently on tour with Built to Spill]?" We all have to pay the rent, rockers. I know who I am.

can do that!” Peril said cheerfully. “I’ll practice my menacing face right now. Rrrrgh. Hrrgrrrmbrrgh. Rrrroarrrrg.” “You sound like you’re digesting an overweight grizzly bear,” Scarlet commented acidly.

We have all grown up, one might say, thinking of nature as an adorable, helpless bunny that some people want to protect and others, motivated by the will to power that is the unmentionable force behind so much of contemporary culture, want to stomp into a bloody pulp just to show that they can. Both sides are mistaken, for what they have misidentified as a bunny is one paw of a sleep- ing grizzly bear who, if roused, is quite capable of tearing both sides limb from limb and feasting on their carcasses. The bear, it must be remembered, is bigger than we are, and stronger. We forget this at our desperate peril.

Listen, guys, fucking around with midgets ain’t no joke. Pound for pound they’re stronger than grizzly bears, and, if you want to know the truth, they happen to scare the living shit out of me. So before I approve this midget-tossing business, you need to find me a game warden who can rein in the little critter if he should go off the deep end. Then we’re gonna need some tranq darts, a pair a handcuffs, a can of Mace—” Wigwam

Thus my lifelong meditation on the concept of groove, what is to make deep rhythm. This becomes a huge part of my life, as a musician of course, but also the question of how it relates to all of existence. When I'm rocking a groove, there is only nature working, ain't no one gonna rock it harder than me. Free from all prison of the mind's construct, I am a fucking mama grizzly bear protecting her cubs, and I don't care if I die. I trust my animal instinct completely. I let go of every thought, let go of all the world, and KILL the groove. The hurt and pain in my heart is my ticket to fly, I surrender all earthly desires in the moment, when it's time to rock and tap the source. I gotta be the groove and nothing else, fuck the world so I can uplift the world. To all you kids out there hurting like I hurt, I'm gonna be with you there in the magic place.

Jeremy supposed that a Christmas party full of elementary school professionals might be the worst place in the world. He would drift among them helplessly, like a grizzly bear in a roomful of children, expected not to eat anyone.

Size me up and get goosebumps, boys. I’m the widowmaker and the slayer of jungles, the mean-eyed harbinger of desolation! I’ve ripped a catamount asunder and sprinkled his fragments in my stew; one screech from me makes vultures fly, one glance puts blisters on grizzly bears, devastation rides on my every breath! Where is that stately stag to stamp his hoof or rap his antlers to these proclamations! Where is the mangy lion what will lick the salt off my name!

The truth is that from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago, the world was home, at one and the same time, to several human species. And why not? Today there are many species of bears: brown bears, black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears.

One day Augustus asked Newt to ride along with him, much to Newt’s surprise. In the morning they saw a grizzly, but the bear was far upwind and didn’t scent them. It was a beautiful day—no clouds in the sky. Augustus rode with his big rifle propped across the saddle—he was in the highest of spirits. They rode ahead of the herd some fifteen miles or more, and yet when they stopped to look back they could still see the cattle, tiny black dots in the middle of the plain, with the southern horizon still far behind them.

soon the girls had Barty enthusiastically involved in a make-believe world far different from the one in which Heinlein’s teenage lead owned an extraordinary alien pet with eight legs, the temperament of a kitten, and an appetite for everything from grizzly bears to Buicks.

Picture yourself, Jack, a confirmed homebody, a sedentary fellow who finds himself walking in a deep wood. You spot something out of the corner of your eye. Before you know anything else, you know that this thing is very large and that it has no place in your ordinary frame of reference. A flaw in the world picture. Either it shouldn't be here or you shouldn't. Now the thing comes into full view. It is a grizzly bear, enormous, shiny brown, swaggering, dripping slime from its bared fangs. Jack, you have never seen a large animal in the wild. The sight of this grizzer is so electrifyingly strange that it gives you a renewed sense of yourself, a fresh awareness of the self— the self in terms of a unique and horrific situation. You see yourself in a new and intense way. You rediscover yourself. You are lit up for your own imminent dismemberment. The beast on hind legs has enabled you to see who you are as if for the first time, outside familiar surroundings, alone, distinct, whole. The name we give this complicated process is fear. [...] Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level. (p. 218)

Now standing in one corner of a boxing ring with a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, shooting a bullet weighing only 40 grains and with a striking energy of 51 foot pounds at 25 feet from the muzzle, I will guarantee to kill either Gene Tunney or Joe Louis before they get to me from the opposite corner. This is the smallest caliber pistol cartridge made; but it is also one of the most accurate and easy to hit with, since the pistol has no recoil. I have killed many horses with it, cripples and bear baits, with a single shot, and what will kill a horse will kill a man. I have hit six dueling silhouettes in the head with it at regulation distance in five seconds. It was this type of pistol that Millen boys’ colleague, Abe Faber, did all his killings with. Yet this same pistol bullet fired at point blank range will not dent a grizzly’s skull, and to shoot a grizzly with a .22 caliber pistol would simply be one way of committing suicide

It is hypocritical to exhort the Brazilians to conserve their rainforest after we have already destroyed the grassland ecosystem that occupied half the continent when we found it. A large-scale grassland restoration project would give us some moral authority when we seek conservation abroad. I must admit that I also like the idea because it would mean a better home for pronghorn, currently pushed by agriculture into marginal habitats-The high sagebrush deserts of the West. I would love to return the speedsters to their evolutionary home, the Floor of the Sky. Imagine a huge national reserve where anyone could see what caused Lewis and Clark to write with such enthusiasm in their journals-the sea of grass and flowers dotted with massive herds of bison, accompanied by the dainty speedsters and by great herds of elk. Grizzly bears and wolves would patrol the margins of the herds and coyotes would at last be reduced to their proper place. The song of the meadowlarks would pervade the prairie and near water the spring air would ring with the eerie tremolos of snipe.

If this is earth,' said the producer from Washington, D.C., 'I'm not interested in what heaven has to offer.

Shockingly, he’s still silent. Calm as a weed smoking cow. I still don’t get it.

Bring it, grizzly. Show me what you've got.

Stay strong," said the detective. "They respect strength." What the hell was she supposed to do? Break a chair? Bench-press a Volvo?

On such mornings, I came to understand how the proximity of grizzlies changes a person. I tasted fear, which burns the tongue’s tip like copper, and felt my body knot.

Out of all the Grizzly kids, Ben had never been deep in the club, instead focusing on academic things. But he was still family, no matter what, even if he had no desire to be a Patch.

This place, the land is more ancient and pure; it's like a concentrated tonic for the soul. If you take too much it can infect you, and if you don't take enough you have missed it completely and your efforts were in vein.

As long as they are carnivorous and/or humanoid, the monster's form matters little. Whether it is Tyrannosaurus rex, saber toothed tiger, grizzly bear, werewolf, bogeyman, vampire, Wendigo, Rangda, Grendel, Moby-Dick, Joseph Stalin, the Devil, or any other manifestation of the Beast, all are objects of dark fascination, in large part because of their capacity to consciously, willfully destroy us. What unites these creatures--ancient or modern, real or imagined, beautiful or repulsive, animal, human, or god--is their superhuman strength, malevolent cunning, and, above all, their capricious, often vengeful appetite--for us. This, in fact, is our expectation of them; it's a kind of contract we have. In this capacity, the seemingly inexhaustible power of predators to fascinate us--to "capture attention"--fulfills a need far beyond morbid titillation. It has a practical application. Over time, these creatures or, more specifically, the dangers they represent, have found their way into our consciousness and taken up permanent residence there. In return, we have shown extraordinary loyalty to them--to the point that we re-create them over and over in every medium, through every era and culture, tuning and adapting them to suit changing times and needs. It seems they are a key ingredient in the glue that binds us to ourselves and to each other.

Her mind whirled, fragments of pictures of him flashing in and out so fast she could barely settle on any one: the day he’d brought her from the railway station and stopped so she could see the view…the horseback ride beside the river when he’d said her eyes were the most beautiful blue he’d ever seen…teaching her to shoot…saving her from the grizzly bear…eating the saskatoon pie she’d baked…coaxing Lizzy to drink her lemonade…the magical night at the pool…his long-lashed green eyes glowing with love for her…

Reviewing our experiences, we had become more and more convinced that carrying arms was not only unnecessary in most grizzly country but was certainly no good for the desired atmosphere and proper protocol in obtaining good film records. If we were to obtain such film and fraternize successfully with the big bears, it would be better to go unarmed in most places. The mere fact of having a gun within reach, cached somewhere in a pack or a hidden holster, causes a man to act with unconscious arrogance and thus maybe to smell different or to transmit some kind of signal objectionable to bears. The armed man does not assume his proper role in association with the wild ones, a fact of which they seem instantly aware at some distance. He, being wilder than they, whether he likes to admit it or not, is instantly under even more suspicion than he would encounter if unarmed. One must follow the role of an uninvited visitor—an intruder—rather than that of an aggressive hunter, and one should go unarmed to insure this attitude.

Throughout its history, the conservation movement had been little more than a minor nuisance to the water-development interests in the American West. They had, after all, twice managed to invade National Parks with dams; they had decimated the greatest salmon fishery in the world, in the Columbia River; they had taken the Serengeti of North America—the virgin Central Valley of California, with its thousands of grizzly bears and immense clouds of migratory waterfowl and its million and a half antelope and tule elk—and transformed it into a banal palatinate of industrial agriculture.

He smiled as he looked at the couple, but Max didn’t miss the subtle change that happened when his gaze shifted to Ivy’s parents. Max had often heard mothers call themselves mama bears, but at that moment, Owen was a great grizzly he-bear who owned the forest. Fuck with him—and his—at your own peril.

All at once a grizzly bear rose in her path and attacked the pony. She jumped off and her pony escaped, but the bear attacked her, so she fought him the best she could with her knife. Her little dog, by snapping at the bear’s heels and detracting his attention from the woman, enabled her for some time to keep pretty well out of his reach. Finally the grizzly struck her over the head, tearing off almost her whole scalp. She fell, but did not lose consciousness, and while prostrate struck him four good licks with her knife, and he retreated. After he had gone she replaced her torn scalp and bound it up as best she could,

we saw something swimming in the water, and pulled toward it, thinking it a coyote; but we soon recognized a large grizzly bear, swimming directly across the channel. Not having any weapon, we hurriedly pulled for the schooner, calling out, as we neared it, “A bear! a bear!” It so happened that Major Miller was on deck, washing his face and hands. He ran rapidly to the bow of the vessel, took the musket from the hands of the sentinel, and fired at the bear, as he passed but a short distance ahead of the schooner. The bear rose, made a growl or howl, but continued his course. As we scrambled up the port-aide to get our guns, the mate, with a crew, happened to have a boat on the starboard-aide, and, armed only with a hatchet, they pulled up alongside the bear, and the mate struck him in the head with the hatchet. The bear turned, tried to get into the boat, but the mate struck his claws with repeated blows, and made him let go. After several passes with him, the mate actually killed the bear, got a rope round him, and towed him alongside the schooner, where he was hoisted on deck. The carcass weighed over six hundred pounds. It was found that Major Miller’s shot had struck the bear in the lower jaw, and thus disabled him. Had it not been for this, the bear would certainly have upset the boat and drowned all in it. As it was, however, his meat served us a good turn in our trip up to Stockton.

This appeared clearly in one of the earliest burial mounds found on the Hopewell farm. There, archaeologists found a young man and a young woman buried side by side. As Stuart J. Fiedel describes the burial in Prehistory of the Americas, “She was bedecked with, and surrounded by, thousands of pearl beads and buttons made of copper-covered wood and stone; she also wore copper bracelets. Both individuals wore copper earspools, copper breastplates, and necklaces of grizzly bear canines” (Fiedel). The skulls had even been buried with artificial noses made of copper. Their bodies were then surrounded by a line of copper earspools. Archaeologists found more than 100,000 pearls in the Hopewell mounds (Prufer).

But this was America, the land of opportunists, and here it wasn’t enough to want something. You had to fight for what you wanted and fight hard, fight through your own resistance and the jeers of others and physical adversity, which was what the Pilgrims had done vis-à-vis the whole Thanksgiving situation, and after them the colonists, who had bucked the most powerful empire on earth even though they were basically just a bunch of underfed tax evaders. And then the pioneers. No, you couldn’t forget the pioneers, who had traversed vast prairies and mountains, and battled Indians and grizzly bears and inclement weather and various kinds of pox, and some had even starved and had to eat each other to survive, which, by the way, would make a terrific film treatment, Billy thought, because it said so much about the indomitable spirit that had built the country. Not that cannibalism was part of the indomitable American spirit, but it showed how far some people would go to find good property.

Doug Spears; the rancher who lived at the mouth of Hell Roaring Creek. ‘So you’re the lady who found the body,’ he said. She hesitated, wondering which body he meant, how much they knew. ‘I mean the hiker’s body,’ he said. ‘Archie told us Jed Trotter got took by a bear too.’ She said: ‘I was talking to Otis Lenhart this afternoon; he says someone was shooting on Wapiti on Sunday.’ Spears smiled and shook his head. ‘It wasn’t me, ma’am.’ Zack Coons regarded her without expression, chewing solemnly.

The animals I have encountered in my wilderness wanderings have been reluctant to reveal all the things about them I would like to know. The animal that impresses me most, the one I find myself liking more and more, is the grizzly. No sight encountered in the wilds is quite so stirring as those massive, clawed tracks pressed into mud or snow. No sight is quite so impressive as that of the great bear stalking across some mountain slope with the fur of his silvery robe rippling over his mighty muscles. His is a dignity and power matched by no other in the North American wilderness. To share a mountain with him for a while is a privilege and an adventure like no other. I have followed his tracks into an alder hell to see what he had been doing and come to the abrupt end of them, when the maker stood up thirty feet away with a sudden snort to face me. To see a mother grizzly ambling and loafing with her cubs across the broad, hospitable bosom of a flower-spangled mountain meadow is to see life in true wilderness at its best.

Black bears rarely attack. But here’s the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning, and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn’t happen often, but—and here is the absolutely salient point—once would be enough. Herrero is at pains to stress that black bear attacks are infrequent, relative to their numbers. For 1900 to 1980, he found just twenty-three confirmed black bear killings of humans (about half the number of killings by grizzlies), and most of these were out West or in Canada. In New Hampshire there has not been an unprovoked fatal attack on a human by a bear since 1784. In Vermont, there has never been one.

Nothing,” said Margaret. “So there once was an Indian chief with three daughters, or squaws. All the braves in the tribe wanted to marry them, so he decided to hold a contest—all the braves would go out hunting, and the three who brought back the best hides would get to marry his squaws.” “Everyone knows this one,” said Lauren, rolling her eyes. “I don’t,” said Mom. I didn’t either. “Then I’ll keep going,” said Margaret, smiling, “and don’t you dare give it away. So anyway, all the braves went out, and after a long time they started to come back with wolf hides and rabbit hides and things like that. The chief was unimpressed. Then one day, a brave came back with a hide from a grizzly bear, which is pretty amazing, so the chief let him marry his youngest daughter. Then the next guy came back with a hide from a polar bear, which is even more amazing, so the chief let him marry his middle daughter. They waited and waited, and finally the last brave came back with the hide from a hippopotamus.” “A hippopotamus?” asked Mom. “I thought this was in North America.” “It is,” said Margaret, “that’s why a hippopotamus hide was so great. It was the most amazing hide the tribe had ever seen, and the chief let that brave marry his oldest and most beautiful daughter.” “She’s two minutes older than I am,” said Mom, glancing at me with a mock sneer. “Never lets me forget it.” “Stop interrupting,” said Margaret, “this is the best part. The squaws and the braves got married, and a year later they all had children—the youngest squaw had one son, the middle squaw had one son, and the oldest squaw had two sons.” She paused dramatically, and we stared at her for a moment, waiting. Lauren laughed. “Is there a punchline?” I asked. Lauren and Margaret said it in unison: “The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.

don’t want to pick saskatoons ever again,” she said in a small, fearful voice. “Now, honey, don’t you worry none,” Nick told her in an exaggerated drawl. “You’ve been picking berries here for years and never saw any ole bears until today.” He winked at her. “Besides, I don’t think that grizzly was after Miss Elizabeth. I think it was more interested in her basket of berries.” “Then why’d you kill it?” Sara asked, looking a little less fearful. “I saw that there grizzly, and I thought to myself, bear steaks! I sure do love bear steaks. And since your pa don’t let me keep any bears in the barn, I rarely get to eat any.” Sara laughed, and color returned to her cheeks. “Silly Nick. You can’t keep bears in the barn!” “Well, maybe not. But I couldn’t let an ole bear frighten a pretty little lady like Miss Elizabeth, now could I?” Elizabeth’s heart lightened at the compliment, but she pretended not to hear. As Nick reassured the child, she could feel the strain inside her ease. “We’ll get that bear’s head stuffed and mounted,” Nick continued. “Then Miss Elizabeth can hang it in her bedroom.” “Don’t you dare,” Elizabeth exclaimed in mock horror. “I’d never be able to sleep!

... family men, Claude." "Then why aren't they home with their families?" "You haven't been listening to me, Claude. It takes lots of honey to raise a family these days..." No, it isn't even that, these teddy bears don't like honey as much as they think they do. They think they're supposed to like it, the way they're supposed to like women and children. They think they're supposed to act like real grizzlies, but they don't feel it. You can't blame them, they just don't have it inside them. What they have, what they love most, is their memories: how the Coach used to shout niceworkpal whenever they caught the big ball or somehow hit the little one, how Dad used to wink when they caught one of his jokes, how when they repeated them he almost died laughing, so they told them and told them - if they told one really well he might do it. They memorized all the conversations verbatim, that about the pussies and the coons, the homers and the balls, the cams and the bearings. They're still memorizing. You can see them almost anytime you're out driving, there in the slow car just ahead, the young man at the wheel, the old man talking, the young man leaning a little to the right in order to hear better, the old man pointing out the properties, the young man looking and listening earnestly, straining to catch the old man's last word, the last joke verbatim, the last bit of know-how about the deals and the properties and the honey. When he thinks he's learned all he can from the old man, he'll shove him out of the car. You watch, next time you're out driving. "...these are the cream, Claude." These are the all-American fairies.

That's when the bear in me came out-and not like those internet picture types of furry chests needing to shed the winter pounds...more the grizzly that eats crazy climbers for lunch species.

He blinked. “Have you ever run naked through the woods?” “Certainly.” She allowed a moment to enjoy the way his eyes flared. “Why? His voice roughened, deepened, back to that just-awakened grizzly-bear tone. “To be one with nature, without barriers. To feel the wind and the moonlight on my skin.” Several seconds passed before he responded. “You can’t feel moonlight.” She smiled…

You look like you could be the love child of a grizzly bear and a navy destroyer.

Bears do a lot of things that are humorous. But bison, I don’t know what kind of sense of humor they have. Dr. Harold D. Picton

At the moment, he had the bearing of a drill sergeant. He was channeling his inner grizzly, and we’d poked the bear.

We have three weeks left, before the season will end, and this will end, and everyone will go, and it will never be again, at least not with us, and the way we are together. So, we have these nights, and we hold them so tightly, so dearly in our hearts.

We have three weeks left; before the season will end, and this will end, and everyone will go, and it will never be again, at least not with us, and the way we are together. So, we have these nights, and we hold them so tightly, so dearly in our hearts.

Still, I must admit, that I suspect these coincidences, these bending branches of charity are more complicated and somehow related to this place, Denali. I didn't just pursue her. She called to me, and I answered the call, as natural and with such strong urgency as the migrating birds that flock here, seeking summer resting grounds and absolution.

Bears. We come in all shapes and varieties. Besides your “typical” bear (a hairy, stocky to heavyset man), there are chubs (heavyset men who aren’t necessarily hairy), cubs (young bears or bears who are very young at heart), daddy bears (older guys, sometimes looking for a “daddy/son” relationship with a younger guy or cub—definitely not talking pederasty here), leather bears (bears who like to wear leather), muscle bears (can be very muscular, but they tend not to worry about abs in favor of some nice padding), polar bears (bears whose hair has gone gray/white), panda bears (bears of Asian descent), black bears (bears of African descent), pocket bears (short bears), Ewoks (very short bears), ginger bears (redheaded bears), and grizzly bears (usually much shaggier and taller and sometimes dominant). And then there are otters (hairy guys who are slim)!

You need to be careful out here, Ms. Sinclair. Smoke is tame, but there are lots of animals around that aren’t. This is grizzly country. There are black bears and moose. If you’re going to go hiking, you had better take someone with you who knows the terrain. “Funny, I must have missed the line of people offering to take me on a sight-seeing trip.” He started to speak and for a moment she thought he meant to volunteer for the job. Instead, he clamped down on his jaw. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to the cabin.” They weren’t very far away, but she didn’t point that out, just let him fall in behind her as she made her way back down the trail. She could feel him there, just behind her shoulders, purposely curbing his longer strides to keep from overrunning her shorter ones. As soon as they reached the bottom of the hill, he whistled to his dog, who had run off after a squirrel. “Remember what I said. Be careful out here.” She didn’t answer, since she had no desire to do battle with a moose or a bear, and instead watched his tall figure retreat out of sight down the path beside the creek. Call Hawkins was truly an enigma. Charity wondered if there was anyone else in his life besides the wolf-dog he kept for a pet.

Let me get this straight. You’re telling me I’m supposed to stand in front of a charging bear and spray it with a can of pepper?” Call fought back a grin. “It isn’t my idea of a good time, but it works. At least it usually does.” “You’re not speaking from personal experience?” “I’ve only had to use it once, but it did the trick. When that little stream of spray hit that grizzly in the face, he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.” Good Lord, the man had faced down a grizzly bear with a can of aerosol spray! She stared at that hard, rugged jaw, thought of Max Mason, and didn’t doubt it for a second. She grinned as she set the pepper spray down on what passed for a kitchen counter--a board with a strip of linoleum glued to the top. “That was very thoughtful. You know what they say in the Yukon--a can of pepper spray beats a bouquet of flowers any old day.

Will he be back?” “Buck or the bear?” Her lips quirked. “The bear.” “Not today. Hopefully, never.” “Was it a grizzly?” “Black bear.” “It must have been a grizzly. It wasn’t black--it was brown.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe her. “Black bears come in lots of different colors. Grizzlies are a whole different species. You have to learn which is which and you have to react to each of them differently.” “I don’t know what you mean.” “I mean you have to be aggressive with black bears. With grizzlies, the best thing to do is lie down, pull yourself into a protective ball, and play dead. The bear might maul you a little, but at least you won’t be killed…not usually, at any rate.” She sagged back against the trunk of the pine tree, her face pale again. “That’s comforting.” Call sighed in exasperation. “Dammit, Charity, don’t you know anything about living out here?” “Obviously not as much as I should.” “I can’t imagine what a woman like you is doing up here by herself in the first place. You did come on your own? No husband, no boyfriend, right?” She straightened, beginning to get annoyed. “I don’t need a husband to do something I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe I should have learned more about the animals around here and less about the history of the area, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have come.” “This is hard country. Bad things happen up here. Unless you’ve been wearing blinders, by now you’re beginning to see that. Why don’t you accept my offer, sell this place, and go home where you belong?” Home where you belong. They were fighting words to Charity, right along with be a good little girl. Her lips tightened. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to sell out and go home. Then you could have your precious privacy back. You wouldn’t have to worry about someone making noise when they worked next door. You wouldn’t have to worry about saving some greenhorn from a bear. You wouldn’t have to think about--” She gasped as he took a threatening step toward her, his eyes snapping as he backed her up against the trunk of the tree. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have to worry about what mischief you might get into next. And whenever I saw you, I wouldn’t have to think about what it might be like to kiss that sassy mouth of yours. I wouldn’t have to drive myself crazy wondering what it would feel like to reach under that silly panda sweatshirt and cup your breasts, to put my mouth there and find out how they taste.

By this point, the contractions were so intense that Izzy was making a low, moaning sound like a grizzly bear, and she was hobbling toward the entrance like someone who’d learned about walking from YouTube videos.

As she stares into the cool prisms of blues and whites, and the clear parts which fracture the light, she notices something deeper. It is a light from within the ice. It's beautiful; so she stays.

Toby looked so miserable the soldiers gathered around him for support. They sang a revised version of their company song: Buckle for your dust, boys, no flakey diddy-bopping. Stay tight, and fight the Grimhilda Red Alert. The second line was adaptable to any situation: the day before it had included references to grizzly bears.