Jim Nolan's Blog

I Like Big Bears and I Cannot Lie

In 2020, the grizzly lifestyle is more appealing than ever.

Holly, role model and resident of Katmai National Park, Alaska. Photo: National Park Service.

There’s nothing wrong with being a human, but other species have a better lifestyle. Like Ursus horribilis, the grizzly bear, whose concentration on eating and sleeping give us much to envy and even aspire to. Especially the bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska.

The biggest and baddest of the bunch live near the Brooks River, which come summer is so chock full of organic wild salmon that it puts Whole Foods to shame. You can’t literally walk across the backs of fish to cross the river, but you could walk across the backs of the bears gorging on them.

These are celebrity bears, like Yogi or Boo-Boo. Their every waddle is observed on bear cams, and in October, fans vote for their favorite fatty in the National Park Service’s Fat Bear Week contest, although many bears prefer to think of themselves as big-boned. I’m voting for Chunk today. He’s in the finals against 747, but he’s already down by 1,000 votes. Rotundity is in the eye of the beholder.

Chunk is estimated to weigh 1,100 pounds. When I showed a photo of Chunk to my friend Ron, Ron said Chunk was pregnant. Chunk is a male. He just has a huge gut, and no body shame. The opposite, really. His size lets him stake out the best fishing spots on the river, typically on top of the little waterfalls the salmon must leap over to continue up the river to spawn. Chunk’s giant maw is waiting for them, his incisors flashing like a sashimi chef’s filleting knife. He may eat 90 pounds of raw salmon a day, the same amount you have to eat at Nobu to get a free meal and your photo up on the wall. Imagine Chunk at the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. Not only would he smash the existing record of 73 dogs in 10 minutes, he’d eat Joey Chestnut, too.

Chunk can’t help himself, and he doesn’t have an eating disorder, either. He has hyperphagia, a condition that doesn’t allow him to feel full. He needs all the fat reserves he can put on, as he’ll wake up in the spring after six months’ hibernation having lost as much as 30% of his weight.

That’s right, six months of uninterrupted sleep. Diet sleep.

And he gets out of holiday gift giving, writing cards, and dinners with family.

Plus, this year, a November election. And a deadly pandemic. I don’t see a downside. If Chunk has room in his den, I hope he’ll shove over and make some space for me. I’m already in a hyperphagia stage, eating banana bread and cannelloni at every opportunity, and using my bulk to dominate the ice cream aisle at Wegmans.

Chunk and I will awaken in late April, with the turning of the earth to spring. The Brooks River will shed its thick ice and once again run free, and the salmon will heed the ancient call to return. Having taken it easy for the winter, we’ll allow ourselves one last moment to take it all in, grateful for nature’s unceasing cycle of death and renewal.

Then, it’s back at it. Those rolls of fat aren’t going to put themselves on.

Survivor Account of Good Friday Earthquake, 1964

Alaska had a 7.0 earthquake on Saturday. Here's an interview with Shirley Blankenship, a survivor of the biggest earthquake ever recorded in North America, a 9.2. It lasted over five minutes and was 25 times more powerful than the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. 

Listen to The Big One

 

"One Man's Wilderness" 50th Anniversary Edition Published

If you haven't discovered the legendary Dick Proenneke, this book is a good introduction. Proenneke "retired" to Twin Lakes, Alaska in 1968 and single-handedly built a log cabin to live in. There he kept a journal, filmed wildlife, and took photos. A TV program using his journal (but not voice) as the narration is popular on PBS stations in California. This reissue has a new introduction by Nick Offerman, the actor who is also a woodworker. I once interviewed Proenneke's friend and editor John Branson. You can hear it here. It's one of this blog's most popular pages. And I have lots of other Proenneke-related stuff here, including information about the culture and language of the Dena'ina Athabascans, who have lived in the Lake Clark area for thousands of years. Thanks to my friend Mike for sending me information about the new edition in a terrific Anchorage Daily News article by Nancy Lord. 

Free Richard Proenneke Readings from Park Service

If you're a Dick Proenneke fan, you'll really like this collection of his writings, wonderfully edited by John Branson, a Park Service historian. You can read it free on-line it here. It contains a detailed biographical sketch. I was interested to learn that he had a J-3 Piper Cub from 1975-1976. He and his brother Raymond used it to explore the Twin Lakes area. Proenneke eventually crashed it (iced carburator) but crawled out to a highway and survived. He was also considered a mechanical genius by those who knew him. You can buy the book on Amazon. Thanks again to Rob Hanson for evenfallstudio.com for pointing me to this in his October 22, 2010 post there.

"łi Ta'a: Glacier Water," A Dena'ina Story by Antone Evan

Qizjeh Vena (Lake Clark), flying through Lake Clark Pass. Photo by Karen E. Evanoff.

Antone Evan traces the path of a glacier in an interview with Priscilla Russell, transcribed by Albert Wassille. It's from Dela'ina Ełnena, A Celebration: Voices of the Dena'ina, which is edited by Lake Clark National Park Service cultural anthropologist Karen Evanoff. There is a free PDF of the book online. I love the next-to-last line, "That glacial water travels farther than human beings, that water goes farther than people can travel." Richard "Dick" Proenneke was a wonderful writer on Twin Lakes (Niłqidlen Vena). Dela'ina Ełnena demonstrates that he lived in a land of many incredible stories.

Photo of Antone Evan from Dela'ina Ełnena, A Celebration: Voices of the Dena'ina. Photographer unknown. My friend Beth tells me he is wearing a hide jacket.

Dena'ina: The People Before Richard Proenneke

A terrific book sent to me a while back by historian John Branson's colleague Karen E. Evanoff, a cultural anthropologist with the Lake Clark National Park Service. There is a free PDF of the book here. It contains fantastic recollections and stories by Dena'ina Athabascans, who've lived in the Lake Clark area for thousands of years. You can hear an interview with Evanoff on Alaska Public Radio here. Below I post a map from the book. At the top you'll find Twin Lakes, where Richard "Dick" Proenneke lived and wrote from 1968 to 1999. According to Branson, "The Dena'ina word for Twin Lakes is Niłqidlen Vena or 'lakes that flow into one another'." Click to enlarge.

Jon Krakauer Explains Reason For Chris McCandless's Death

Photo credit: Jon Krakauer

This February 11, 2015 New Yorker piece by Jon Krakauer I missed. In it, the author of Into the Wild explains that McCandless died of toxic compounds in the seeds he was eating in a desperate attempt to survive. I have written about Richard Proenneke, a man who unlike McCandless was truly at home in the wilderness, and have also interviewed his editor, the super cool John Branson. You can find them here. As different as Proenneke and McCandless were in skills, it seems like they were alike in many ways, each having a desire to test himself and a deep love of the natural world. I wish they had met. 

An Even Bigger Alaska Earthquake

Today's earthquake in Alaska registered 7.9—that's huge. Fortunately, it did not create a tsunami. Here's why people in Alaska are afraid of them: the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, the second largest earthquake ever recorded (9.2). Listen to my friend Shirley Blankenship describe what it was like to experience it... with a houseful of young kids.  

The Big One 

Interview with Richard Proenneke editor, John Branson

Branson and Proenneke making ice cream, Lake Clark, Alaska circa 1979. Photo by Raymond Proenneke. Mr. Branson was nice enough to talk to me about the incredible Mr. Proenneke. You can hear it below.

 Listen to Richard Proenneke: Not So "Alone in the Wilderness"

Richard Proenneke, the Polar Opposite of Chris McCandless?

 

For Christmas I got a copy of "Alone in the Wilderness," a film about Dick Proenneke by Bob Swerer Productions. In 1968, when Dick turned 51, he decided he'd like to live in the Alaska wilderness year round (he was an in-demand diesel mechanic in King Salmon). He single-handledly built a log cabin with hand tools, and stayed there for the next 30 or so years. Proenneke is The Man. An expert carpenter, hunter, outdoorsman and filmmaker (he records his story with a Bolex camera), he was also a terrific writer. The film uses his observations for the narration (someone else reads it) and marries them to the film he shot. I can't help wishing Chris McCandless (the subject of of Jon Krakauer's bestseller Into the Wild) had met the guy and learned how to survive from him (McCandless died in 1992; Proenneke moved back to the Lower 48 in 1999). As different as they were in skills, it seems like they were alike in many ways, each having a desire to test himself and a deep love of the natural world.