A mother bear and her cub amble toward us across the grassland. The cub—a shaggier, blonder miniature of the mother—is in its second summer here in Hallo Bay on the coast of Alaska’s Katmai National Park. It mirrors mom’s adult behavior but is still playful, affectionate. Now the cub snuggles against her, and they sit down facing away from us and curl up for a nap. They’re completely, almost radically, at peace with our presence.
And the feeling is mutual. Within half an hour, my fiancé—who, like many first-time visitors to Katmai, had been concerned about coming close to such large predators—is so at ease around the bears that he too falls asleep in the grass.
Around 2,200 brown bears live in Katmai National Park and Preserve’s four million acres, and its…
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National Geographic (Digital) - 1 Issue, September 2024