tomorrow. but sad news:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/heroes-emerge-in-bear-attack-230316171.html

Really sad news. So thankful the man and woman got out alive.

Diane, are you back to Churchill?

In Winnipeg as I write.

The attack happened a block from the Churchill hotel we'll be in tomorrow. Off to orientation dinner now. Expect cautions.

Diane, that was one sad story, but a good outcome for the people involved. Shows how the world is truly changing in that part of the world. I'm sure the town officials have ordered particular vigilance because of the incident, but stay safe, and have a wonderful time! Looking forward to hearing about your adventures in your usual humorous style! So please keep in touch.

so sad....

We all love your writing Diane, keeps us on the edge of our seats.

Diane, you have woken to a fairly nice morning in Winnipeg given the time of year, and it appears that your flight will be on time. Having some light snow falling in Churchill should make a great day for your arrival.

The woman who was attacked has recovered enough that she has been released from hospital in Winnipeg. She was truly lucky! The gentleman will take more time to heal.

Diane, you obviously love the polar bears and understand that they are "wild". Their lives are based on finding a food source that will allow them to survive. Every adult who lives in Churchill understands that they must be cautious at this time of year. I have no doubt that "security" will be a priority.

I also have no doubt that you will have another incredible experience. I cannot wait to read about your time in Churchill.

Like carman said .. can't wait to follow your adventures with your return to Churchill.

Cheers, Anne

No big reports this trip. You all know the score.

But, as I was trying to find a horizon to look at during the helicopter ride this afternoon, we saw a big red splotch. Everyone in the copter was oohing and aahing, while I was trying to right my brain. Then even I saw it--the red was a kill. a seal, part of which was then in the mouth of one seal, while another picked at the rest of the remains. With two ravens (new to me) poked at the blood.

The young woman who, with her friend, triggered the bear attack had lived in Churchill for a couple of years, and so was experienced in the polar bear rules. Rule 1--don't leave the Halloween party at 5 a.m. after imbibing too much. The woman has been released from the hospital; the man who was hurt trying to help her is supposedly in bad shape and still in the hospital. The woman is a Gypsy's waitress, so the place was an awkward sad/happy during lunch.

Steve was livid that two bears were killed as a result of the attack. He said the bears were tracked down and killed after the attack, without anyone trying to tranquilize them and take them to the bear jail. And one bear left an orphaned cub, who will now spend his life in the zoo.

We've already seen a mom and cub during out school bus tour, and bear after bear on the helicopter trip. others saw 21 bears at the cape, lined up along a mud flat. I saw 2, but then I was happy to see anything.

Steve is a little grayer, couldn't get any balder, and still full of vigor.

I thought I was a veteran, this being my third go-around with the bears and Steve. Helena and Mark, however, are on their seventh visit. I'm not sure whether they will make it through to the eighth, since they are both in poor physical shape. oxygen for one, walker for the other. The PolarBearites have been understanding, encouraging, patient, and happy to have them on the bus (which I fear Helena will fail to climb before the trip is ended.

This group of PolarBearites is eccentric, exceedingly well traveled, from the U.S., Canada (of all things) England and Australia, and without pretensions. One guy is a retired Fire Chief from Whistler who, with his wife, camped out throughout Canada for 5 months (that was not a typo) last summer. Another couple, from Australia, is traveling basically in the U.S for 5 weeks (four of which are mandated vacation--yes mandated).

Tomorrow the tundra.

I forgot to post the bears--here they are


Churchill, Day 2
Let’s get this out of the way. I don’t want to leave. Not the bears, not Churchill, not anything here.
Today was a full non-bear day. Up early. Eskimo Museum, a one-room schoolhouse of a museum, filled with artifacts, carvings and history. Plus a taxidermied polar bear. During our one hour stay, I looked him in the eyes, looked at a few carvings, returned to the bear, back to the artifacts, to the bear, to the tiny gift shop, to the bear. And, before going to the school bus, one more long look, eye to eye, with my bear. Not real, but not likely to get a connection with the real thing.
Then, because master guide Steve wanted us to get a real taste of cold, to the Fort on Cape Merry. There was history from a guide, of course, but I recall nothing. Only the wind, cutting through my cheeks. And the full grey clouds hovering just over the muddy waves, across from the volcanic rocks that line the coast.
Back to town, some time for wandering. Now I know that the town is just 9 blocks long, and 10 minutes or so across. But walking north from end to end, heading into the wind, brought back the Churchill of my first trip. The freezing face knows it’s alive. How I had missed that shattered skin. This, of course, was cause for celebration and a duck into a store (there are only three or four).
A calmer walk with the wind brought us back to Gypsy’s and lunch. There, Steve told us the sad news. Just at the crossing where the school bus turns right to the road to the tundra buggies, a bear had charged a lifelong Churchillian. He tried cracker shots to scare the bear. Nothing. He tried rubber bullets. Useless. So, he had to shoot. Another bear casualty, but no human injury. Not physical, anyway. Steve said the man, who he knew well, was overcome with sadness that he had to act as he did. Not guilt, since Churchillians know the score, but sorrow.
Pulling ourselves back together, it was off to the musher, Big Dog Dave. More cold. But greatly told history from this 50 year old who looks, at most, 25. Dave’s view is that his dogs must be happy, must have fun running and must want to run all the time. So he raises them that way. He loves them, massages them, administers massages and dog yoga (yes, you yoga mavens, dog yoga), acts as their vet (Churchill has no vet) and psychoanalyst. Running dogs eat 10,000 calories a day, costing $25,000 in high protein, high fat food per year. Dave does not race the Iditarod, because Churchill’s inaccessibility to the south makes it too costly. But for the past 10 years, he has raced in a race he organized which either begins or ends in Churchill (the route is Churchill to the north, 250 or 238 miles, depending on the route). There is nothing along the route at all. No towns, no people. The racers must carry all their provisions with them from the get go. On the last race, Dave was second coming close to the finish, when he saw that one of his dogs wasn’t happy. Instead of pushing the dog for the last 30 miles, Dave stopped his crew for a 2 hour rest. As a result, he came in 4th. But his dogs are still happy to run.
Of course, we PolarBearites got to run in a sled. While we were in a small hut listening to directions, the dogs anticipated the rides, and started baying. First one, then another, then more, until all were baying in unison. Dave asked who wanted to go first, on the fastest run (the dogs go nuts when they first get going), and I decided to step up. So Barb and I did the deed, she seated in front and me standing (just like a musher!) in back. What a ride. The wind cutting ridges in my cheeks, as the dogs flew, hopping more than running. I even got to move my feet from the sides to the center, to help brake at the end. When we came to a turn, we had to lean to the side of the turn. You feel as though you will roll right over, but you don’t. After all the PolarBearites had their turns, we warmed up in the hut, and Dave did his closing ceremony—handing out our “Ididamile” certificates, which he made us promise to hang next to our family pictures.
A full day. Dinner soon. Tomorrow the tundra and my bears.

Tundra Day 1


Thin pickings on the tundra today. Nothing in the afternoon. Zippo. In the morning, arctic foxes, ptarmigan birds. A couple of bears, but far away and lazy. Another couple laying near a tundra buggy.
Disappointed? No. Because it’s quality, not quantity. We PolarBearites had one fat, healthy, beautiful male bear who walked to the back of the buggy, slunk down, put his head on his paw just like my dog, and stayed. And stayed. For half an hour.
His face was toward the buggy porch, his nose right in front of the middle of the buggy porch. We could see his eyes, ears, hairy paws. His big black nose (we learned that polar noses can move from side to side across their faces). His hips, splayed like a puppy’s. Grace.
If that weren’t enough, during lunch, as I was alone on the buggy porch, a bear, pretty far away but close enough to differentiate without a zoom, walked from right to left before me, from the bay’s edge to behind a bunch of willows. His head swayed down and semi-down. He lumbered deliberate and indifferent. His hips were huge. Just the bear and me, alone on the buggy porch. Sublime.
We will try for more bears Thursday. No matter. I am satisfied. I love my bears.
P.S. You can have your ashes scattered on the tundra. I asked Steve the wonderguide. Noah, be warned.

Tundra—Day 2
The day’s end—The PolarBearites seated on the right side of the prop jet, taking us back to Winnipeg from Churchill, are just too burnt out to travel all the way to the left side of the plane, to see what might be the Northern Lights. We are inured. It’s just been too busy of a day.
How did it begin? More food at Gypsy’s, of course. Coffee for those in the know. Then on to the school bus, for our last day with Steve the Wonder Guide, and our last day on the tundra.
Well, the tundra started out bumpy, as usual, but without bears. The PolarBearites were anxious, given the prior tundra day’s dearth of bears after the PolarBearites’ lunch (did I mention we ate again?). We needn’t have worried.
First up was a lazy bear near the willows. Up, down, plop down for the duration. As we were watching him, another bear was traipsing up from an iced lake a way down the tundra. Windows pulled down, back door opened, shut, opened again, photo clicks everywhere, binocs out. Watching the bear come towards us. Or so we hoped.
In the middle of all of this, two bears on the other side of the buggy were snoozing, having just sparred (they were too far during sparring for us to be real voyeurs). Attention shifted, of course, to the new bear sights, which appeared to be resting and cooling off from the prior fracas. So the PolarBearites did what PolarBearites do—we had coffee, cocoa, and tundracino (a mix of both).
At almost the end of the tundracino break, one of the two bears resting near the willows got his second wind. That meant that the second bear would be forced to play. Sparring. Up close and personal. We PolarBearites were close enough to see the action. With embellishments (zooms, binocs) we could see the big feet flail in the air, the big paw pounding down on a shoulder, the sharp teeth pulling the bear-skin taut. And the almost smiley faces of the players, sharpening their skills for the upcoming trek across the Hudson Bay.
With all this excitement, we had forgotten the bear walking across the lake. Here he was, sleeping in the willows.
On we PolarBearites buggied, to Ptarmigan Alley. We did not find ptarmigan, but we did find another bear, close to the buggy, lolling in front of some willows. We watched him for about 20 minutes, during which the extent of his action was to lift his head up, put it back down, and clean his paws. Looked just like my dog.
Leader Steve then decided that this bear was a good backdrop for lunch. More food. Just as we were leaving, the bear lugged his sorry bottom to the lake and slid onto the ice, chin first, and butt up, then shoulders down, then finally flopping his butt to the ice. His encore? A roll on his back to cool off, all four feet waving at the sky.
Thereafter, as we left Ptarmigan Alley, we saw a bunch of lovely clean, white ptarmigans. One in a tree. Lovely.
That was it for a long, long while, as the buggy bumped its way over the rocks. In fact, it looked as though this afternoon would be as barren as the first tundra afternoon. Oh ye PolarBearites of little bear faith.
The buggy driver and Steve the Great both pulled out their binocs. Both squinted. Both smiled. We had a mom and a cub. A “little” cub, of less than a year. The duo ever so elegantly walked across the lake to land. The cub trying to be just like its mom. The mom looking behind to make sure the cub was following. The cub followed mom off the lake to “behind” three willows—“behind” being directly in front of our buggy. The mom dug in the snow and lay down. The cub did the same. Thus creating the perfect Christmas card, even for this Jewish girl.
We had to leave, since time was scarce. Even so, the driver crawled the buggy right past the bear family, almost close enough to touch. A sweet goodbye to the tundra.

WONDERFUL - brings back some stunning memories. So glad your last tundra day was so fantastic. You also got some super shots. I will have a cup of tea out of my GYPSYS cup in honor of your polar bear experience.

You are a fantastic writer!

Thanks for sharing! We were In Churchill this year but too early for more than a couple of bears. The Beluga whales were a spectacle though. I am so inspired by you Diane that I WILL get there when the bears are out in force.
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Helen