Actions and Reactions - Part II

By A. Sayward Lamb

Milt Inman, and his wife, Eleanor, flew to Alaska for a few weeks visit with my wife, Cynthia and myself. We had driven up from our home in Maine, with our pick-up truck and travel trailer, a few weeks earlier. They flew into Anchorage airport where and met them, and then drove back to our camper, located at the Russian River Campground.

We had no sooner “settled in”, than Milt announced that he was ready to go fishing!. This was a bit surprising to me, because I thought they would be tired from their long flight from Maine.

One thing for sure, Milt was ” a raring to go” so we donned our fishing gear, grabbed our fishing rods, and headed upstream, following the well worn path alongside the Russian River. It was late evening by this time, probably around ten P.M., although the sun was still shining. I had already caught my limit of three salmon earlier in the day, Milt also wanted to catch his limit of three fish, but I informed him I wasn’t going to stay up too long, because my day of fishing had started shortly after five A.M. that morning.

Milt fished at several places as we headed up-river, and shortly after eleven P.M. had his limit of three beautiful Red salmon. Of course, he needed to clean them before we headed back to the campground, so we walked a short distance upstream to a cleaning station, located on the edge of the river. This provided him with a table that enabled him to remove and dispose of the innards from the fish, by throwing them into the river.

Milt had hardly started cleaning his first salmon when we saw a huge black bear slowly approaching from upstream, on the opposite side of the river from where we were located. Once the bear got close enough to smell the salmon, it started to walk towards us from across the river, which at this point I would guess was sixty to seventy feet wide.

One thing for sure, we didn’t need that bear on our side of the river, so both Milt and I hollered as loud as we could and at the same time jumped up and down, waving our arms, hoping to discourage the bear from coming any closer.

By this time he was about half way across the river, and I know I was getting a bit nervous! Glancing around at the ground I saw a piece of tree limb, about the size of a baseball bat. Quickly, I picked it up, and with a mighty heave, threw it towards the bear! The stick landed directly in front of the bear, and when it landed, splashed a sizeable amount of water over the bear’s face.

When this happened, the bear stopped abruptly, while both Milt and I continued to holler loudly, as we continued dancing, prancing, and wildly waving our arms, still hoping to scare the bear away!

Our strategy worked, because after pausing for a few seconds, the bear slowly turned away and returned to the further banking of the river and then headed downstream.

Someone asked me what would have happened if that bear hadn’t stopped, when I threw the stick? My answer: “The next thing I would have tossed would have been one of Milt’s salmon!”

Many times since that occurrence, I have thought about how foolish it was of me to have thrown that piece of tree limb, especially when the bear was in such close proximity to us. Recently I read an article which stated that one of the defenses of protection from bears is to throw something at them. I only know that I this case it worked!

Copyright©2006
A. Sayward Lamb