Wild Thing~

On By cindy knokeIn Conservation, MY PHOTOGRAPHS, REVERIES, TRAVEL REVIEWS

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You make my heart sing!
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Look into the eyes of wild grizzlies,
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and you can see their wild souls.
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On a typical day we are seeing 25 or so individual bears.

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There are a lot of cubs. One mama has four which is quite unusual.

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They are here for the salmon,

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and need to consume about 20,000 calories a day to prepare for winter.
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Arguments do break out,
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but don’t last long.

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Wildlife in The Knight Inlet in Canada is incredible and I will be posting more photos of bears and many other wild creatures.
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Here is one of the venues where the action is taking place.
Cheers to you from the magnificent wild grizzlies who look directly into our human hearts and ask for our protection~

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278 thoughts on “Wild Thing~”

  4. Must be lovely to see them like that… I really love the look on the face of the first one. I even started talking to him/her 🙂
    (Sometimes I’m a bit creazy like that!… 😉 )

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    1. The impulse to talk to the bear arose as your visual brain processed the meaning of his look into your eyes, before your rational brain caught up with the image. This is a skill. It means you are emotionally intuitive with bears and probably people. I had to be intensely trained to read body language as a therapist and I find the same skill set works beautifully with wild animals. Wild animals are more logical thank people too so it’s easier.

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      1. Thanks for the affirmation! 🙂 Indeed, with all kinds of animals and also people… Sometimes I earn strange looks from people if I speak about it like in my reaction to your photo 🙂 And often, especially with people, it is not an easy thing to live with, an emotional roller coster… but I wouldn’t want to miss it! Well, anyway… it is a part of me 😉

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              1. Just a short addition of something I just realized… I think that photography often works in exactly the same way for me… (not always – which is a pity 😉 ) I seem to click into a totally visual mode with my brains not even trying to catch up and it is only at the computer that I really realize what it was that I saw… Thanks for making that so clear 🙂 <3

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                1. Yes, beautifully described. This is exactly how visual intelligence works, faster than your analytic brain. I wait, and only look at the photos when I get to my laptop and sometimes think, wow, look what I saw! Laughing…..it is so much fun to free up parts of your non-analytical brain and let them it take the lead. It is akin to the result one gets from meditation, and one can feel very much “in” the moment. There are lots of ways to reach this state, but photography works for me, and it sounds like it does for you too. We are lucky to have found it.

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  6. Thank you so much for sharing these amazing photos of our bear friends and family…..I can’t believe they want to take them off the endangered species list! I’m so grateful people like you are in our world capturing all that is good about it and sharing it. Love to you my friend.

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    1. Not a tour. We went by floatplane up the Knight Inlet in British Columbia and stayed in a cabin in the middle of nowhere called Sailcone. If you like wild, you would like this.

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    1. I am so glad you want to see more. They were so incredibly photogenic. On my first day, my camera gave me a message, “Your battery is exhausted!” This didn’t even happen in Africa! Thank you my friend for supporting the bears and hugs to you~

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    1. And they were all healthy appearing although there were significant differences in size. This size differential may remain throughout their life. They are varying sizes of bears, just like people not all related to how much salmon we eat! 🐟 🐟

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            1. A lot of bear safety precautions can reduce risk considerably, like walking in groups, carrying spray, making noise, respecting viewing distance regulations, and monitoring bear body language to determine it’s comfort with your presence and distance, and not carrying food in grizzly country.

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  20. What a wonderful experience. I haven’t seen bears up in the wild since I was a kid in the rockies.
    Fierce giants with the sweetest face…and those claws. (I still say the face looks so much like Bouvier de Flanders dogs…our black one lumbered and was frequently mistaken for a bear)

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    1. I am not a bear expert but there is a difference in disposition between coastal and inland bears. A hungry bear, a surprised bear, a protective mama bear, can all obviously be quite dangerous. But mostly bears don’t bother people and a large portion of their diet is herbivorous. They have a skewed public image. I notice published photos of grizzlies tend to be fighting or ferocious images of enraged bears. I have many hundreds of photos of very placid grizzly bears. Most bears just want to avoid people, who are of course, much more dangerous than bears.

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    1. Salmon and it’s remote isolation. There are no roads. No people living here. It is on native land and access is restricted and protected. It takes effort to get here and numbers of people allowed in is strictly limited. They are managing these precious bears wisely. I noticed flying in on the float plane how much surrounding forest is being clear cut though which worries me considerably. These is the second trip we have made to be here with these bears and each time it feels to me like they live in the last vestiges of Eden. A trip here makes you a conservationist, but most of the people who bother to come here, already are.

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    1. Yes! Brilliant Brenda. This feeling of being mutal mammal prey or predator is somehow elemental, and looking these massive predators in the eye is a life altering experience. I have been looking in wild animal eyes all around the world in zoom lens since I retired, and I am just floored by the sentience and emotion I see looking right back at me.

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      1. Cindy first let me say, thank you for following me. I hope that you like my blog as well. I can’t write as much, I have to come to the internet. I forgot to bring my post I had been working on. Grizzley Adams was one of my favorite shows. And I have always loved bears and would love to get this close to them. I know they can be very dangerous, but at the same time so beautiful.

        I used to envision going bear hunting, but trust me, I could not kill. I happen to love animals and people, but to be able to see bears this close would be so amazing, thanks for posting.

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  28. Wow, Momma Bear, Poppa Bear, and lotsa Baby Bears… and even Teddy Bear !!! Looks like there’ll be no porridge for me tonight ! Ha !
    Great pics, Cindy, except it looks to me like you’re just too close to those grizzleys. I like to be a bit more distant. I can’t run as fast as they can. Looks like you’re having a great time. Take care though ! 🙂

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    1. I will explain the bear viewing mechanics in the next post, but basically, we are on bear viewing platforms that have wooden railings that go to above waist level and were open air, about 12 feet from the bears, one fight of stairs up.

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  34. It looks like my comment didn’t not go through the wifi.
    This is a stunning series. All are so clear, I can see the details and their expressions. What a treat to view them. Thank you, Cindy! ,3 🙂

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    1. I was told by a guide that a Richard Attenborough photographer swam in the pool to get photos of the bears from the salmon’s perspective underwater. I think this would be a job I would pass on!

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  43. Pingback: In search of Bears | Curiosity Takes Me

    1. Bless them for their wisdom and understanding of grizzly bears. I think the Native Nations should be tasked with, and given resorurces to manage the world’s grizzly populations. I read The Blackfoot Nations’ statments on grizzly bears when I was in Glacier National Park last year. They understand these animals better than any other group in the world and they have educated me. I am so grateful for them and this treaty. Thank you for sending it to me Lara.

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