Tiger Mom

Tiger Mom

Glacier Park, MT 

2017

You have plenty of time to think on a cross country road trip - especially when your co-pilot spends most of her time sleeping.  I felt guilty playing the music too loudly and you can’t exactly wear headphones while driving even when there's little to hear on the Canadian prairie. Despite my best efforts to focus on other things I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time on the road thinking about bears.  Grizzly and black kept intruding on my daydreams.  My mind Rolodexed through many subjects as hour piled on hour, but bears were never far away.  Bear attacks are very rare but we were going to have kids with us for one leg of the trip and that changed everything for me.

Part of our plan was to rendezvous with Jenny’s brother Matt, his wife Tracy and their three kids in Whitefish, Montana for a few days then travel into Glacier National Park.  Tracy managed to secure two rooms in the historic and remote  Many Glacier Hotel.  The hotel is set in an incredible location.  It looks out on an amphitheater of mountains reflected by Swiftcurrent lake, with water clean enough you could drink it with a straw (okay, don’t try that . . . but you get the picture). The roads in to Many Glacier are so steep and winding that they’re challenging enough to drive during the day.  You’d be risking your neck at night.  As a result the only way to safely see the sunrise or sunset there is to stay at the hotel.

Many Glacier’s remoteness and rugged terrain also make it prime bear habitat, and I knew that if one of the Boemmlettes was eaten I’d never live it down. “Uncle John, remember the time we were in Glacier and _____ was eaten by a bear?”  Nobody wants that.  So I concocted a plan to keep the kids both “bear aware” and entertained at the same time.  I ran it past Jenny and she gave it two thumbs up.

I told the kids that while I wouldn’t want to see anything bad happen to anyone my focus was on their safety.  With that in mind I let them know that I was considering bringing along more than just bear spray for our hikes into the park.  We were supposed to be taking a boat tour to the other side of Swiftcurrent Lake where we’d begin our hike through prime bear habitat.  In order to ensure their safety I’d be packing an unusual lunch:  agapeter (aka steak tartar, aka raw meat).  Once we were on the boat each kid would begin strategizing.  Whichever passenger we agreed upon would be asked to carry an extra lunch in their backpack.  The operation was to be called “code name:  Pete” (for agapeter, get it?:) Do you pick the slowest member of the group who wouldn’t even try to outrun a bear, or someone faster who might be able to at least draw the bear away from the group?  My nephew Mathew thought it’d be great if I just carried it myself.  Thanks, kid.

Anyway, the boat ride was cancelled.  Much of the trail at higher elevations was still snowed in.  We were thinking that just hiking around the lake sounded like a much safer alternative anyway until we overheard the hotel manager describe an incident the night before.  Apparently the previous evening when we were wandering the lobby and the front deck of the hotel, a grizzly bear was spotted running full speed past several people along the road about a hundred yards from the hotel.  Undeterred, we decided to hike around the lake anyway.

The scenery was incredible but by then I was definitely not the only one in our group with bear on the brain.  I told Tiger Mom Tracy not to fear since Matt and I both had bear spray we’d bracket the group with our firepower.  We’d travel like the guys from the movie “Platoon.”  The bears wouldn't stand a chance.  For the first time I can recall we encouraged the kids to use their outdoor voices, tell stories as loudly as they pleased, etc.  Knock, knock jokes.  Anything was fair game as long as we kept up the chatter.

We stopped occasionally for pictures and the group began to enjoy their surroundings.  But whenever discipline slipped Tiger Mom called Matt and me back to our positions.  “Man your post!”  (Okay she didn’t say that, but I’m the one writing the story so I get to decide how to tell it).

The first fresh pile of bear poo appeared about halfway into the hike.  We could have turned back then but would that have done any good?  What if the bear was behind us now instead of ahead? The pile told us just enough information to be useless:  there was a bear, but where?  We moved on.  

We came across the second pile of bear poo maybe fifteen minutes later.  At that point we walked a little louder and talked a little louder but kept going.  Call:  “Codename! “  Response:  “PETE”. There’s a popular expression:  whistling past the graveyard.  It means to make light of an ominous situation while hoping for a positive outcome.  In Many Glacier it’s different:  whistling past the poo pile.  

As we rounded the lake eventually we came through a clearing where the trees were less dense.  I breathed a little easier for a few minutes until I realized two things.  First, although our visibility had improved in the open, the wind had picked up considerably.  That meant that while we may have stood a better chance of seeing a bear, the chances of it hearing us had actually diminished considerably.  The second concern was even more obvious:  we were walking toward where the big bear scare had happened on the bridge the night before.  “Codename . . .”

Within minutes of getting off the trail we were all packed up and driving toward Glacier National Park’s marquee attraction:  the Going to the Sun Road, a marvel of depression era engineering and one of America’s greatest drives.  We hadn’t even made it out to the main road before we had to stop.  There were several cars stopped on the road.  In Glacier that usually means one thing:  wildlife spotting.  We took our turn in the queue hoping that whatever had drawn a crowd on this remote road was worth the wait.  I didn’t get my hopes up.  At first light that morning I’d taken Mathew and Evelyn out on a Subaru safari looking for wildlife.  Although that part of the park is supposed to be a great spot for viewing, we only came across some free range cows.  I joked that it was a pack of wild cows and that we were lucky we had our cow spray with us, but we would have rather seen something a little more exciting.  

When the cars ahead of us slowly moved on I watched closely as it came in to view.  A bear.  It wasn’t the big grizzly we’d heard about but it came close enough that I could have touched it with a broom handle from the passenger seat of our car.  What a great way to end our time in Many Glacier.  Now we just had to hope that the bear didn’t run off into the woods before the kids had the chance to see it.  I’d spent so much time making bear jokes I wondered if they’d begun to think their Uncle was full of it - like it’d been a big joke the whole time.

We had just enough time to snap a few pictures before the bear passed out of view.  We drove off and waited for the others at the next pullout.  As soon as they pulled in behind us I went to ask if they saw the bear.  “Yes,” Tracy responded, “and just the way I was hoping to see a bear - from inside the car!”