The Great White Bear (25 page)

But however relaxed a polar bear's stride may be, it can effortlessly eat a up a great deal of distance in a surprisingly short space of time, and by the time I had bundled up and slipped onto the back deck, the bear was no more than thirty, forty yards away, casually looking up at me as it advanced. There was no other buggy in the vicinity, and my companions on Buggy One were inside and occupied; there was only me, my rapid breathing and increased heartbeat, and the approaching bear. Like a ghost's, its approach was silent until suddenly it was so close that its head and then just its snow-dappled muzzle filled my viewfinder. I lowered the camera and looked it in the eye as it looked up at me. Only now, with the bear perhaps three feet astern of me and six or seven feet below, as I braced myself to step away from the edge in case the bear decided to stand up on its rear paws and lean on the deck to take what would have been an uncomfortably close look at me, did I finally hear a noise: almost imperceptible, the softest of crunches of snow underfoot. The bear paused, looked at me, and for a moment we were alone, just the two of us, not another living thing in the world. Then it huffed out a short breath, as if indicating that it had sized me up and decided I was not worthy of any more time. With that, it disengaged our mutual gaze and broke the spell, padding across the tundra and away, never looking back.

To me, mention of the word
lodge,
at least in a wilderness context, evokes images of rustic cabins built from sturdy logs, a roaring fire in the corner and a rug on the floor. At first glance, the Tundra Buggy Lodge—five large modular trailers on huge wheels—does not seek to scale such romantic heights. The lodge's external aesthetic screams functional rather than rustic, and understandably so. As a fixture it is best described as semipermanent: occupying essentially the same location, at a spot on the shore of Hudson Bay dubbed Polar Bear Point, for the bulk of each bear season, it must nonetheless be towed there anew every year and thence, for the final couple of weeks of each season, east to Cape Churchill. Cape Churchill is the
ne plus ultra
of polar bear viewing, indisputably the best place in the world—outside of Nikita Ovsyanikov's cabin on Wrangel Island—to observe mature polar bears assembling in anticipation of being able to set out onto the sea ice. It is accordingly highly restricted in its availability. As runner-up spots go, however, Polar Bear Point is in rarefied air, orchestra seating for an annually unfolding ursine drama.

The lodge comprises two bunkhouses; a cozy lounge car that functions primarily as a kind of anteroom where guests pace and sit in a Pavlovian manner in anticipation of the call for breakfast or dinner; and the dining car where said breakfast and dinner are cooked, served, and eagerly consumed. Between each car, viewing decks afford the opportunity to sneak a cigarette or watch whatever wildlife might be in the vicinity, although during my time at the lodge, the arctic air appeared to discourage most of those on board from tarrying on their way from one car to the next. Most guests, it seemed, preferred to do their bear viewing either during the day on board a Tundra Buggy (two of which—one for each bunk car—are at the dedicated service of the lodge) or from the warmth of the lounge.

It was from the lounge that we watched, absorbed, one evening as two subadult males sparred in the light of the setting sun, throwing snow over each other and wrestling. One of the two appeared to be clearly dominant, forcing the other onto its back where it lay, paws waving in the air, as the first bear pinned it to the ground. As we looked on, a third bear emerged from the orange glow, heading toward the sparring pair as if contemplating whether to turn their tussle into a triple-threat match before apparently changing its mind and veering off in another direction.

The show over, I retired to my comfortable and capacious bunk, wrote in my journal, and fell asleep as the car rocked gently and almost imperceptibly in the fierce winds. In the night, I awoke, looked out the window, and saw a polar bear sheltering from the wind, covered with snow except for its head and neck, which peeked out into the harsh elements. I looked some more, squinted, saw the bear's head moving slightly, until my conscious mind began to assert authority and question how a polar bear could bury itself in a few inches of snow cover and why, even if it could do so, it would leave its head uncovered. With that, the apparition vanished, revealing itself as a windblown drift, and I fell asleep again.

When next I woke, northern lights dripped from the heavens, as if a razor blade had sliced open the sky and aurora had spilled out. They shimmered for a while as I watched; I briefly contemplated waking some of my fellow guests, as we had promised each other we would. But although I had seen plenty of aurora displays in my time and knew that this was one of them, I no longer had complete confidence in the way my consciousness was translating the images my eyes were sending to my brain. I did not want to wake a dozen people from their slumber only for them to look at a dark piece of sky where my apparition had been.

By the time I had resolved my inner dialogue, the lights had faded and disappeared, and I closed my eyes once more.

The morning revealed a pattern of bear tracks around and beneath the camp and, a couple of hundred yards away, the same two bears lying where they had wrestled away the evening before, resting now in the fresh layer of snow that had lightly dusted them overnight. When they awoke, they stretched and moved toward each other again. And we watched from a nearby buggy as once more they sparred.

As polar bears almost always are, they were silent, their mood and intent conveyed through body language. They began with a kind of ritualized pre-dance, mouths open but tilted downward, heads held low. Only when each had convinced the other of a lack of aggressive intent did they begin, leaping at each other, grappling on their hind legs, nibbling and gnawing on each other, using their giant paws to push and shove each other, then collapsing to the ground and wrestling, one bear once more on its back, the other nipping at it until they squirmed once more to their feet, rose up on their hind legs, and began again. The bear that appeared to be on the receiving end of most of the exchanges sought on occasion to turn away and even run off a short distance but received by way of a response nothing more sympathetic than a bite on the rear and a resumption of the engagement.

Only when both bears had had enough, the physical exertion causing them to overheat and seek the cooling comfort of the snow, did the engagement temporarily cease. As it did so, a female and cubs appeared over the horizon, the two offspring glued to their mother's side as she marched in the direction of the lodge and then, catching the scent of the males, paused and stood on her hind legs, smelling the air. Apparently satisfied that the sources of the odor posed at worst a mild threat, she continued onward, albeit on a path that took them a greater distance from the males than their original course would have done. Suddenly, the two cubs, perhaps themselves noticing the juvenile males, bolted in the opposite direction; but the mother did not break her stride, did not pause or in any way react to the cubs' fright, and within seconds they had collected their nerve and resumed their position at her side.

The young males in turn showed only a casual interest in the visitors, raising their heads briefly but lacking either the energy or the inclination to pull their entire bodies away from the cool comfort of the snow. A new arrival, however, produced a greater stir. This was an adult male, its gender and maturity clearly evident in its size and its more rounded physique.
^*
His approach caused more apparent concern in the mother, who now led her cubs away from the lodge, past the lounging adolescents, beneath our buggy, and to a safe distance, her pace fractionally more hurried than before, her gaze cast frequently in the direction of the approaching bull.

Now, too, the subadult that had appeared the more enthusiastic to spar with his peer and appeared to have gained the upper paw in most of the exchanges rose to his feet and set off eagerly to intercept the interloper; in a more territorial species, his actions might be interpreted as a challenge or a threat, but in this instance his motivations could only be guessed at. Perhaps it was an invitation to spar, perhaps simply an overdose of teenage hubris. Whatever the case, it became immediately apparent that the move had been a mistake.

The two bears had almost touched noses when the younger one froze on the spot. Whatever the means by which he had done so, the older male had evidently conveyed, in a fraction of a second, that the two animals were not in any way peers and that the subadult had clearly overstepped his boundaries. As if at once recognizing the error of his ways, the youngster began to move slowly away, but in so doing contrived to back himself up against the wheels of the lodge; still keeping his face toward the adult, who had barely moved, he painstakingly maneuvered his rump so that it was free of the obstruction and continued to withdraw. Only then, perhaps because the younger bear was no longer trapped and was free to escape, did the adult move after him, pacing forward, obliging the would-be rival to continue backing up with his head in a low, submissive position, his mouth open. Seemingly satisfied that a sufficient degree of obsequiousness had been displayed, the adult now lay down in the snow and began to groom himself. At this, the juvenile turned and started to jog away; but evidently he had, and not for the first time, misread the situation. The adult leaped to his feet, quickly chased the youngster down, bit him on the rear, and forced him to once more turn and demonstrate his fealty as the older bear lay down to clean himself anew. After another few minutes of submission, the adult was apparently satisfied; when the youngster turned to leave a second time, the adult did not protest, licking his fur quietly as the juvenile returned to his patch in the snow and went back to sleep.

We moved on.

The snow was icy and hardened, blown by the harsh winds into tightly packed mounds of crystal sugar. The sun repeatedly threatened to emerge from behind the clouds, and when, at the midpoint of the afternoon, it carried out that threat, its rays reflected sharply off the packets of silvery snow.

We lurched across the tundra until we came upon two bears dozing in the sun by the left side of the trail. The snow appeared disturbed, suggesting they had been sparring. We drew up to them slowly; they looked at us casually. One hauled itself to its feet and wandered over, sniffed the front tire of the buggy, and began to lick and lightly chew it.
^*
It walked in front of us, licked and chewed on another tire, found a patch of perfectly polar bear—size snow, and lay down in the shade cast by the buggy. In due course, the other bear joined it, each bear now resting its head on its paw, their noses close together and their rumps farther apart, forming a
V
shape in the shadow.

I slipped outside onto the viewing deck, stood at the edge, my hands in my pockets, and gazed at the bears as they dozed. Periodically, one would open its eyes and look directly at me. I wondered what, if anything, it was thinking. Was it completely indifferent to our presence, so inured to buggy traffic that it barely even paid attention? Was it comfortable but wary? Or was it in fact displaying the predatory patience for which polar bears are famed, lying quietly in anticipation of the moment when one of us would lean too far forward and into striking range?

The bear closed its eyes again.

In the distance, the waters of the bay rippled slightly. I hunkered down into my coat as an angry wind whipped off the tundra. I pressed myself up against the rear of the buggy to protect myself, and then, all at once, the wind died down, and there was silence.

Evening on Buggy One.

The descending sun angled the last of its light through the windows as we assembled tables and chairs and arranged paper plates of cheese and crackers. It would have required an especially enthusiastic realtor to describe the furnishings even as functional, but compared to the progressively less clement conditions on the other side of the thin walls, as a rapidly strengthening wind buffeted the buggy's exterior, the setting provided a feeling of protective comfort.

Our visitors arrived, a dozen or so, blowing out their cheeks and rubbing their arms as they escaped the elements and entered our tiny sanctuary. Their journey had hardly been expeditionary in nature—a short walk from the Tundra Buggy Lodge, next to which, after a day of lurching across the tundra in vain search of polar bears, we were now docked—but sufficient in the circumstances for the air outside to chill fingers, bite at cheeks, and make the unremarkable surroundings in which they stood a welcome destination.

To the accompaniment of the nibbling of snacks and sipping of the finest boxed wine northern Manitoba had to offer, Robert Buchanan provided a brief tour—if it could be so described, given that it required no physical movement on anybody's part other than a slight turning of the head. Here, below the floor, was the cage—"Except we don't like to call it a cage; we prefer to call it a platform"—from which it was possible to photograph polar bears closely and safely. Over there were computer monitors, camera equipment, and wireless Internet portals, which among them held the promise of making polar bear research more versatile and comfortable. No longer did watching bears require endless days shivering on top of an observation tower at Cape Churchill; the installation of remote cameras meant that at least some observations could be conducted more comfortably and just as effectively anywhere from Buggy One to a base in more salubrious climes.

"What we're looking to understand from this research," Buchanan continued, "are three things. What is the census of the bears and how is it changing? What is the movement of these bears? And we use satellite tracking, radio collars, and other mechanisms to determine that. And what are the geographic pockets where these bears are going to survive? Because in all honesty, it is our belief—and I pray every night that I am wrong about this—that this species will not be here for future generations. What you are seeing here will not be here in the next century. We can be sad about that, or we can be motivated to do something about it."