In the Presence of Power
To lock eyes with a bear in the wild is like a bolt of lightning to the soul
(photograph by Mark Weller)
Drifting like a cloud. Engine up and off, barely a breeze, water so calm the clouds float on the surface of the lake as much as in the sky, and in between the Little Dipper drifting, silently just a few dozen yards off shore of the Oak Island sandspit. No waves. No wind rattling the branches. Complete calm and quiet.
And then chaos.
On shore, just off my starboard side, a pair of adult Canada geese erupts in a clamor of calls and takes to the water shepherding four fuzzy goslings between them, the shrill of their alarm calls shattering the silence like stones smashing glass. How could I have disrupted them? I think to myself. I was barely moving, barely breathing, moving more slowly than the clouds.
Then I notice. The alarm calls are not aimed at me. It isn’t the Little Dipper that has shattered the serenity of the moment. They aren’t even looking my way. Whatever has alarmed the geese is on the shore. I grab my binoculars and follow their gaze towards the beach.
And lock eyes with a huge black bear.
Judging by the postcard racks at the local shops, it may seem like the Apostle Islands are just a collection of rocks and water, a place to paddle the corridors of sea caves or long reaches to be tacked by sailboats. But walk a bog at sunrise and listen as the light weaves its golden threads into the dark tapestry of night — slivers of birdsong, the low clatter of ducks. A chorus of frogs touched off by the growing light and then the bugling of sandhill cranes overhead. By the time the first rays of direct sun brush the treetops, the soundscape is a full-throated roar, calls and bellows, chirps and whistles rise like mist. Life thrums in these islands. They are places of tracks and feathers, hoots and growls, the staccato calls of gulls, and the whistle of wings. They are islands of life.
Over 800 species of plants (some like the bird’s eye primrose and butterwort on Devils Island found nowhere else in Wisconsin), carpet the islands. There are old growth stands, bogs dotted with pitcher plants and orchids with names like “Rose Pogonia” and “Dragon’s Mouth.” The air is stirred with the wings of some 300 species of birds - hawks and eagles and passerines, migrants using the islands like stepping stones to cross the big blue expanse of the lake heading north in spring and coming south again in fall. Bird counts on Outer Island have tallied as many as 800 hawks, mostly broad-wings, spiraling in the air at once. In one exceptional migration year, counters documented more than 140,000 birds of 107 different species (as many as 28,000 in a single hour) from the Outer Island sandspit in what writer Michael Van Stappen called “a wild circus” of birds.
There are six species of salamanders, as many as 10 kinds of frogs with their cacophony of calls on a spring night, four types of snakes. There are deer and otter and marten and beaver and, right now, there is a black bear on the Oak Island sandspit staring back at me.
Time seems to stop. It is a large bear going perhaps 300 or 350 pounds, black as a hole in the night sky except for the lighter brown swirl of its muzzle. The geese calls caught it grazing on beach grass, its mouth stopped mid-chew, the wisps of grass trembling in its jaws as it measures the possibility of something different to eat. Its body is tensed as a drawn bowstring, legs spread, head down, eyes locked on the goslings barely one quick leap away.
Black bears (known as “Makwa” in the Ojibwe language) have always been in the islands but tracks were once more rare than they are today. The original old growth forests offered little diversity in the way of habitat. But openings created by lumbering, fire, agriculture, and quarrying drew more bears across the water. Martin Kane, a self-described “itinerant island-dweller, fisherman, sugar-boiler, and moonshine distiller” who lived on Oak Island in the 1930’s and 40’s kept a pair of bear hounds named “Rex” and “Schnapps” and claimed to have taken many bears from the island.
(bear tracks on Julian Bay Beach, Stockton Island - photograph by Layne Kennedy)
Today, bear tracks stitch the beaches of nearly every island in the Apostles. They are powerful swimmers, the wake from their wide paws and pointed snouts stringing the islands together like beads on a necklace. For years Stockton Island was famed for having the highest density of black bears in the state of Wisconsin and one of the highest densities in all of North America (as high as 2.1 bears per square mile in one study, double the density of the mainland). It was home to famous bears like “Skar” named for a large wound on its flank and another that ambled down the dock at Presque Isle on the night of July 31, 1988 and boarded a sailboat called Atlantis before being scared off into the night. That bear was sedated by park rangers and relocated to the Chequamegon National Forest some 20 miles south of Bayfield, only to return, again and again, and earning the nickname “MacArthur” from the famous World War II general who boasted “I shall return.”
Other islands have their bears as well. The population of black bears on Sand Island nearly doubled between 2002 and 2010. But the island that currently holds the distinction of the highest bear population in the Apostles is Oak. And through the binoculars, I am staring into the eyes of one of them from the deck of the Little Dipper, drifting just off the sandspit, the low light of the evening sun casting the moment in golden glass.
(trail cam photograph of a black bear cub in the Apostle Islands - National Park Service photograph)
In over 30 years of exploring these islands, I’ve seen only a handful of bears, none this close, this clearly. I can see the reflection of light in its eyes, the cloud of mosquitoes humming around its ears, the shake of the beach grass in its mouth as it resumes chewing. To see a bear in the wild is like a flash of lightning, a sight that will sear itself into your memory forever. It often happens suddenly. The sight quickens you. You are in the presence of power. Later, you will find yourself remembering things — the color of the grasses it was standing in, the slant of light off the wet beach rocks — that otherwise would go unnoticed. You will recall the tilt of the animal’s head, the way it stabbed the air searching for a scent.
And the predatory look in its eyes: three of the goslings have obediently followed the parents but one has turned and is paddling innocently not away from the danger but towards it.
No bigger than a feathered football, the curious gosling is only a few yards from the reach of the bear, the adults clamoring with voices that echo off the shoreline trees and ricochet back across the bear. The moment seems to stretch until it would snap - the gosling paddling closer, the bear lowering its muzzle, tensing for the single leap that would take it within reach of its prey.
And then it is over. One of the adult geese notices the danger to the gosling, clucks once in a voice of authority, and the young goose veers off away from the bear at the last minute swimming back towards safety, its wake an elongated V in my binoculars.
When I look up, the bear is gone. The geese quiet. The clouds still drift. The beach is just a beach again. Only then do I remember to breathe.
For tips on how to be safe in bear country like the Apostle Islands, check out the information on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore website below:
For more of my writing on the Apostle Islands (and more photography by Layne Kennedy) check out our book Jewels on the Water: Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands at the link below:
— photography by Jeff Rennicke unless otherwise noted in the caption.