This week’s travel dream: Bear-watching on Alaska’s Kodiak Island

The young bear had the upper hand, so “I watched her square, expressive face very closely,” said Ted O’Callahan in The New York Times. A 300-pound Kodiak, she had materialized in the tall grass just 10 yards from us, and she had our backs to a slope. I was thrilled for the most part: We’d come to Alaska’s Kodiak Island expressly to view Kodiak bears in their only natural habitat. But this up-close encounter was more than even our guides were hoping for. Harry and Brigid Dodge always carry one “field-worn” Winchester rifle and some fireworks, but the couple’s scare tactics weren’t likely to be much help. Mercifully, the bear soon decided on its own to pivot and retreat. An older male, the Dodges later told us, might have chosen to fight.

The Dodges, who run Kodiak Treks (kodiak­treks.com), aren’t the least bit reckless. Though their “low-impact” bear-watching trips get visitors closer to Kodiak bears than a bush-plane flyover would, the Dodges work always to keep a safe distance from the animals, staying downwind and behind cover. Finding bears with the Dodges is never very hard. Kodiaks, which are a subspecies of brown bear, can grow to 11 feet and 1,200 pounds, and Kodiak Island “is something close to a paradise for bears.” Across about 14 previous months in the Alaska wilderness, I’d seen six bears. “On my first day on Kodiak, I saw nine.” Their home turf, meanwhile, was “almost preposterously majestic.”

The 45-minute flight from the town of Kodiak to the Dodges’ simple, solar-powered lodge would alone be “the highlight of most Alaska trips.” For us, it was the start of a three-day excursion up Uyak Bay, with nights spent camping out and enjoying simple dinners that often included foods, like fiddlehead ferns, gathered during the day. By our final morning, we were expert at observing the Kodiaks in their natural surroundings, but were no less fascinated. Waiting for the mail plane on Harry’s small boat, we watched five bears playing on the shore. They galloped. They wrestled. They played dead for each other. Sometimes they didn’t do much at all, but every passing minute “let us see what it is to be a bear.”

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