Of Bears and Bagels

So Friday at work was insanely busy. It wasn't necessarily the number of cases - although that was quite high enough - so much as the type of case: ones that required extensive workups, deep and complicated reasoning, meticulous client communication and education. There were several complex cases that came in unscheduled and required lengthy procedures or testing protocols. Two of the nurses were out due to unexpected events, which left us unusually short-handed. And of course to top it off, there was the usual complement of abscesses and lacerations and hit-by-cars to field, just like any other day. This was somewhat more frustrating in view of the fact that my Saturday - a day usually jammed with appointments, often double- or triple-booked, a day when people calling for emergent cases are often told that we will get them in, but they may have to wait - had only four cases booked for the entire day. Four. I've never, in 14 years here, seen a Saturday as lightly booked. There were moments - well, hours - where all three doctors working Friday afternoon half-wished that some of the cases pouring through the doors would pour through on Saturday, just to give us enough time to manage the cases in front of us.

Like most days, though, it had its compensations. For one thing, we did a lot of good that day, got a lot of work done and helped a lot of animals and people. For another, it was one of those days that reminds me that by and large, I love my clients. Most of our clients are great, and several of the ones I saw that day were particular favorites of mine. One client - a client who has become a friend, and whose entire family are favorites of mine - had brought her elderly dog in for a procedure. Our pre-surgical bloods located a significant issue, however, so rather than proceed that day, I advised a course of treatment to address the metabolic disorder, with re-check bloods in a month. The client - a warm-hearted, funny, charming woman with strikingly beautiful eyes - thanked me for delaying the procedure, agreed to all suggested treatments, and then followed that up by asking, "And do you guys want donuts or bagels today?"

"Er - well, you don't have to do that, but if you're asking, I'd vote bagels," I said.

"Good choice. And do you want REAL bagels, or the crappy kind from the grocery store?"

"I don't know... do we want real bagels or the crappy grocery store bagels?" I asked SS, sitting nearby.

"We want real bagels," she said, laughing. "Is that FJ on the phone?" she adds, recognizing the behavior.

"Yes," I tell her. Meanwhile, FJ is asking me, "What kind of cream cheese do you like?"

"Well, personally I don't like the fruit kinds much, but anything else is fine," I say.

"Good for you!" she commends me. "How many people are there today?" SS counts them up for me and relays the information.

"Twelve," I tell FJ, thinking: That's convenient. An even dozen.

"Okay," FJ tells me cheerfully.

" You're my favorite now," I tell FJ, teasing, in a half-flirty, half-coy tone.

"I'm your favorite now?!?" she asks me - reasonably enough, since FJ and I like to go out to coffee and have girl-talk together.

"I heard that," SS says, laughing. FJ sighs.

"I know; my dad always wins," she sighs, resigned - but in truth, JF and both her parents are so good, so kind, so genuinely warm and loving and thoughtful and good-humored and generous that you would be very hard-pressed to choose between them. They are all lovely people, always a delight to deal with, and I've been very fortunate to be able to treat their pets for many years now. They are the kind of people who humble you, by virtue of no more than being who they are: You want to be a better person so that you can be worthy of their regard.

Half an hour later FJ arrives with enough bagels to feed an army and three different kinds of cream cheese.

Have I mentioned I love my clients?

One way or another we made it through the day and I left work only a half hour late. I needed to bring sheep feed out to the farm; when I got there, R helped me unload it. R had been moose hunting and was home for one night before going back out. I asked if she'd gotten anything yet.

"No, but my hunting partner got a bear... sort of by accident," she said.

"There has to be a story with that," I said.

"Well, we were in camp tented up and my hunting partner heard something crashing around and rattling things and poking around the fly of his tent. He waited til the snuffling went away and then stuck his head out. There was a bear in camp."

Oh, dear. Besides being dangerous in their own right, bears are destructive to property - they are, for example, fond of plastic and will readily chew up and destroy even extremely sturdy plastic objects, such as the impact-resistant equipment lockers on the backs of the 4-wheelers, and parts of the 4-wheelers themselves. In addition, the presence of a bear in camp pretty much ensures the complete absence of moose anywhere in the vicinity. Moreover, a bear that is not cautious about human habitations and presence is a potential hazard to every person it encounters.

"Yikes," I said.

"Yeah," agreed R. "Anyway, K got it before it did much damage, although it was pretty interested in our outhouse. There were ropes of bear spit hanging off the seat. A little too close for comfort, if you ask me."

I'll say.

"Come on in and have a glass of wine," she added, brightening.

Well. After the day I just spent, that sounds awfully good. You don't have to ask ME twice.

I went in and had a glass of wine and chit-chatted a bit with S and R and YS, sipping at a glass of Merlot (which had the strange and mysterious ability to magically refill itself every time I turned my back.... or maybe that was R being hospitable.) After more like two glasses of wine, S stood up.

"Come on, it's dinner time," S said, gesturing me into the kitchen. Well, this was not really my plan, but hey - I find it hard to turn down such invites at Wildwood, where the food is always as good as the conversation.

"What're we having?" I asked, sniffing appreciatively.

"Bear heart," S smiles.

"Yeah, I called to find out what parts of a bear you would want to use," R said. "S told me 'everything but the rectum'."

"Yup. No bear asses around here," says YS, to general amusement. This is followed by a story that S tells us about having gone to a specialty foods store in Anchorage once in search of jellyfish, which she had been told might be an interesting gastronomic delicacy. The store employees looked at her like this was the weirdest and most disgusting request imaginable.

"This is a store that carries pig rectum," she adds, to put it in context.

"Pig rectum...? To EAT?" I ask, in some astonishment; I thought that was only used for Fear Factor gross-out points.

"Yes, to eat. Jellyfish were unbearably disgusting to everyone there, but evidently pig rectum is just fine."

"Um... ew," I said, secretly glad that the usable parts of a bear do not include anything rectal whatsoever. I'm not sure if it was the wine - lubricating my ease of amnesia - or if it was simply that the smells from the kitchen were growing increasingly enticing, but I quickly forgot all about bear behinds (and pig ones, too) and got myself a plate.

So I had bear heart for dinner. I expected this to be tough, both because heart muscle is in constant motion from birth to death, never still, and so might be expected to be a little tough; and also because bear needs to be cooked very thoroughly in order to avoid the risk of trichinosis, a parasite that can kill you - quite painfully, I hear. But the bear heart was surprisingly tender - and having eaten bear before (although never, I assure you, the bear ass) I knew I would find the flavor to my taste. The best enchiladas I ever had were made from bear.

And bear heart: Yum.

I've lived in Alaska for many years, and have eaten many things here that I'd never tried (and sometimes never even heard of) before I got here: high-bush cranberries, low-bush cranberries, salmon berries, birch syrup, fiddlehead ferns, squash flowers, moose, caribou, reindeer, puff-ball mushrooms and morels, roasted kid and peacock eggs and pilot bread and candied fireweed, rose hips strait off the bush, rhubarb champagne and home-made kefir, pickled green beans and pickled pike, not to mention various kinds of secret-recipe sauces and ways to make or preserve fish and fowl and whatever else you might think of. But even for all that, eating bear heart was a bit of a novelty. But you don't want to waste the sacrifice, so if you shoot a bear, my advice is that you cook it thoroughly and honor the animal by using every last bit of it.

Except the bear behind.

Barebacking in Alaska

So last night - and a chilly night it was, dropping to 15 below zero before morning - I ran some sheep feed out to S and R's after work. When I get there I bang on the door, which was promptly answered by R who says, "Two things: get inside quick, and go grab a plate."

"Oooh!" I say, sniffing appreciatively as I kick off my boots. "What're we having?"

"Roast kid," R says, pointing me at the roasting pan, "and mixed greens and baked parsnips. And you like red wine, right?"

"Mmm, yes," I agree happily, ladling out some au jus on top of a healthy portion of roast kid and shuttling over to the parsnips, which smell divine, baked with onions and butter to a lightly caramelized surface. The greens are mixed snow peas and fine-cut broccoli. Yum.

I fill my plate and go to the table, where everyone else has finished eating but is happy to keep me company with wine and conversation while I eat. Some neighbors are over, in a highly celebratory mood, and S's daughter YS is there too, drinking root beer and adding good cheer.

As always at Wildwood, the conversation is good and the company warm and pleasant. The food, it goes without saying, is always excellent. I'd never had parsnips before that night, but they were delectable, tender and flavorful. We chitchat about the sheep, the farm, people's lives, laughing and generally enjoying ourselves. Before long the neighbors go off to their own house, YS driving them in case they might have been a little more celebratory than is wise to put behind a wheel.

As S and R and I linger over the remnants of the wine, I ask if S doesn't mind me telling this story about her girls. She doesn't, so here it is.

I've known the Wildwood clan for over a decade, and when I first met S's girls, they were polite, personable, wiry and energetic kids of maybe 7 and 8 or so. At the time, they all lived in a smaller cabin than the house they now occupy (which they built a few years ago on a neighboring property, though they still own the cabin.) They have always had horses, and the girls have ridden and been around animals of all descriptions since early childhood. They have grown into lovely young women: smart, good-hearted, caring, generous and capable, with warmth and humor and a kindness that is wonderful to see. This is partly their good parenting, but it is in part the choices they have made, the people they have chosen to become. There's plenty of credit to go around, and I think it should be divided evenly amongst the girls themselves, and those who had a hand in rearing them. They have been taught since childhood to think of the welfare of themselves and others, and have internalised the lessons well. But no childhood is complete without a few miscommunications.

One summer day, S relates, when the girls were quite young, she looks up from her chores to see the girls riding double, bareback, on one of the horses, their little helmeted heads close together as they bob sedately along with the motion of the horse, their little riding-booted feet bumping gently at the horse's side. S's first thought is: How did they get up there by themselves? [As it turns out, they had the bright idea to put a pan of grain on the ground so the horse would stand still, then climbed aboard with the aid of an up-ended bucket.] And her second thought is: Where are their clothes?

"Girls!" S exclaims, in obvious agitation. "What are you doing?!? Why are you RIDING NAKED?!?"

Big tears form and roll down their little faces. "But Mom!" they wail. "You told us never to ride without boots and helmets, and we're wearing them!"

"And pants!" S exclaims. "New rule! Boots, helmets and pants!"

I about died laughing. I could just see their sweet adorable little faces, all big eyes and trembling chins and tear-streaked rosy little cheeks, completely bewildered as to why S's hair was standing on end. After all, they did everything safe! They made the horse stand still, they used a mounting block, and they were wearing their safety gear! How could anything be wrong?

Sigh. Bless their adorable little hearts. Oh, well; in those days this was a wilder place, less populated, fewer paved roads, a bit more rough-and-ready, more of the last frontier. Maybe it didn't seem unreasonable to the girls to be riding around naked in those days (and of course, things that seem unreasonable to adults often seem QUITE reasonable, even eminently logical, to little children). I guess what is sensible and logical is to some degree in the eye of the beholder, however, because another time S told me this story.

When she first moved to AK - well before the girls were even thought of - S was a new graduate, struggling to make ends meet. She had student debt, and had not been working long enough to have much of a bumper. She remembers one time spending literally the last of her money for the month on a 40# bag of dog food. It was going to have to last her the rest of the month; there simply wasn't enough to stretch her budget any further, but with luck she'd be able just squeak through with what she had - so long as nothing went wrong.

You know something went wrong, don't you?

That night, after a long day at work and doing chores and worrying about finances, S finally retires in the long summer twilight. Late in the night (or early in the morning, whichever) the dogs suddenly start going mad, barking and carrying on. She gets up and looks out the window.

Oh, son of a bitch. There's a black bear standing in the bed of her pickup truck, eating her last $20 in the world, in the form of the bag of dog food. Worse, this is a problem bear: any bear that takes food from human habitation is a hazard, dangerous to the livestock and pets and humans that live there and in nearby homes. Typically, unless you relocate them many many hundreds of miles away, they just migrate back to their neighborhood and resume being a problem; as a result, most such bears must be destroyed.

S jams on her boots and grabs her gun, loading it hastily. She runs outside, draws a bead and shoots the bear, dropping it in the truck bed. Right about then, as the report of the gun is fading from her ears, she thinks: Maybe I should go inside and put some clothes on.

Put some clothes on?!? I am thinking.

Because, after all, S tells me, butchering out a bear at one in the morning is all very, well but the mosquitoes are going to have a field day if you don't get dressed.

About here I give her a sidelong glance. "You went outside, completely naked, to shoot a bear?"

"I was wearing boots," S denies, faintly defensive. "Besides," she says, "I had to hurry, if I was going to get my dog food back."

"Get it back?" I demand, goggling slightly. She can't mean....

But she does. "I was down to my last $2o in the world," she reminds me. "There's no way I could afford to let that bear have my dog food. I gutted it, opened up the stomach and scooped out the dog food."

"How was it, after all that?" I ask her.
"Bit damp," she allows, "But not bad. I dried it out so it wouldn't mold."

She also - being a frugal type, and not wanting to disrespect the bear's sacrifice - butchered out the bear and put it in the freezer. It kept the wolf from the door long enough for her to get her feet under her, and to this day its hide hangs on her wall, a reminder of Providence. I wonder sometimes if that bear was visited upon her expressly to tide her through.

At any rate, if you're ever asked to do things bareback in AK, it might be best to clarify what, exactly, is meant by "bareback." Because it could mean you're riding without a saddle. Or it could mean you're riding without clothes. Or it could mean you're running outside in the wee hours with nothing but boots and a gun to defend the last thin margin of your survival. Bare-naked.... or bear naked, perhaps.

When I think of these two stories together, I have to grin. Maybe the bareback riders are a wee payback for S's own midnight adventures in the raw. You know what they say: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.....

Bald Mountain Butt-Buster

So last weekend, instead of being at work saving little doggie and kitty lives, I was at the Bald Mountain Butt-Buster Competitive Trail Ride. I was working P&R (pulse and respiration), which means that I was responsible (along with a bunch of other volunteers) for taking vitals on horses after they came into the checkpoints. The point of competitive trail riding is that your horse should be conditioned so that it recovers (in the allotted 10 minutes of rest after entering the checkpoint) to a pulse and respiratory rate that is consistent with A) a well-conditioned horse, and B) a rider who is appropriately husbanding their mount's resources and not racing it willy-nilly over hill and dale without regard for the horse's well-being. A friend of mine put it this way: "The first competitive trail ride I entered, I was beaten by a 69 year old man. I figured: If I can be beaten by a 69-year-old, this is the sport for me."

Here are the things that are fun about being CTR ground crew:

1. Horses.

2. Being outside in Alaska in the summertime.

3. Free food!

4. Riding around in the woods on ATVs driven

by cute, capable, amiable young men.

5. Did I mention Horses?

6. I DID mention the outdoors, right?

7. FREE FOOD!

8. Read # 4 three more times.

9. Repeat # 1 through 4.

10. Repeat # 1 through 4 again.

Now, I will grant you that it was a bit rainy on the first morning, but it stopped before we went up the trail to Checkpoint One. We found ourselves a nice spot amongst the fireweed, spangled with clinging drops of rain. While there, a plane flew by, low overhead; Oh, GREAT, I'm thinking, THAT'LL calm down the horses; but the pilot kept it steady above us, not buzzing us, not low enough to spook the horses. I glance up. Little red Cessna on floats. Has to be Dave, I think, cruising by to check out the ride from the aerial view; how many red Cessnas on float would be flying over lake-free Bald Mountain otherwise?I resolve to ask him when I get home if he was doing a fly-over [he was], and bend my head back to the task at hand. We check through all our riders (28 competitors and two sweep riders) and go back to the staging area for lunch.

By afternoon it has cleared up nicely. Checkpoint Two is in the Clover Field, which is really more of a meadow that used to have a little clover in it, but is pretty much just assorted wild Alaskan grasses now. It's a flat trail to get there, but it's still off-road, so we trundle out in the ATVs. To fit more people in per trip, three of us stand in the bed of the ATV and hold onto the roll-bar, knees slightly bent to absorb the motion (like you would on a dog sled), swaying with the bumps and feeling our hair streaming behind us like banners. We spend the afternoon sprawled in a meadow, basking in the sun, chit-chatting and waiting for riders to arrive, which they tend to do in groups; hence there are long stretches where we laze around being dive-bombed by enormous dragonflies (who were feasting on the late-summer insects that were attracted to our no-doubt tasty hides), admiring the clouds, getting tans and generally relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

Day two dawned raw and heavily overcast, though not actually raining. Our first checkpoint is mere yards from the staging point, in the driveway of one of the ride organizers. We sit and digest our breakfast whilst the riders ride the course and do their obstacles (certain areas where they have to trot, or side-pass their horse over a log on the ground, or retrieve a bucket from atop a hay bale while mounted, etc., all under the watchful eyes of trail judges.) The point riders from day one had reported a bear sighting, so one of the sweep riders was armed; while I take his mount's vitals he hitches his shoulder holster into better position, remarking that he wasn't quite sure why he was wearing it; if he met a bear, he says, and actually had to shoot at it, it would be less likely to run away than to laugh at him (right before it dragged him off his horse and ate him).


After we shut down our checkpoint we cram ten women sardine-style into a Suburban and drive up to the lunch area, where we mow down some calories and eye the top of Bald Mountain, shrouded in the low clouds. The point riders come in and report another bear sighting, as well as two moose. In view of this - and deciding that discretion is the better part of valor - we all elect to use the outhouse in hopes of avoiding any solitary treks into the brush which might involve unfortunate pants-around-ankles, face-to-face interviews with the local wildlife. After sorting through the available toilet paper ( a decent proportion of which had been confettied by squirrels), we all gird up our respective loins and load five at a time into the ATVs again for a little steep-and-rocky P&R team relay up to Checkpoint Two.

Now, if I haven't mentioned it, riding around in ATVs is fun. Really really fun. It is a bit bouncy and you do get thrashed across the face with various branches and leaves (all of which dash icy droplets of water over you), but without a horse, there'd be no way we'd get to our checkpoint before the riders do. This is really quite lucky, since it means we get to go up in the ATVs. Chad and Cole, our two drivers, are cheerful and competent, happily ferrying eight women up the trail and parking their vehicles off to the side, lounging comfortably on them whilst riders come in, wait, receive their P&Rs, and go on. There are two classes going through the checkpoint: Competitive Trail and Pleasure (18 riders in all, plus the sweep riders), and in the lull between the two groups a moose cow and calf come through the bush, see us, and bound away, long legs reaching elegantly over the thickety ground cover in a high, prancing trot. Not much later, more riders arrive, and we are back to handing out P&R cards, timing, slipping unobtrusively between the gently steaming flanks of one horse and the next, and I am nestling my stethoscope against warm damp hide, shutting out the outside world and listening to the secret world of a horse's heart, letting the steady rhythm of it thunder slow and powerful in my private ear.

In early afternoon we shut down Checkpoint Two, and down the mountain we go. Tabby and Jessica - co-workers who I have mercilessly roped into volunteering - have the bright idea of avoiding the Suburban-sardine routine and going all the way back down the mountain and to the staging area in the ATV. This seems like just a DANDY idea, because it is Just. So. Much. FUN to ride in the ATV, especially with a personable, funny, capable driver. So we rocket on down the road, the wind unfurling my hair behind me, tiny bugs occasionally impacting our faces, stinging like bits of flying sand.

As we descend the flank of the mountain, I can feel the air growing warmer with the loss of elevation. When we get back to camp, some of the riders, long checked in, rubbed down and packed up, are already gone. My hair is in a long, spiralled snarl from the ride, and I am hungry, but my feet have stayed dry and I'm not really cold despite a day spent tucked just under the belly of a cloud. I'm thinking: Maybe next year, if I can just get my hands on a horse.....