In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.
—John Archibald Wheeler, physicist
A froth of dark, roiling clouds churns above the swaying canopy. The rain begins, but as a gentle caress.
I am trudging through ground moss and rotting blowdown to the symphonic pitter-patter of reconstituted sea. Shouldering a flimsy daypack and holding a single-barreled shotgun, Clark Hans, my hiking partner, leads me along a high, forested bluff overlooking an expansive valley. We reach a lookout on the edge of the bluff with a commanding view across the floodplain, where limestone mountains dressed in a patchwork of cedar, spruce, and hemlock vanish under strangleholds of mist. To our right, the river meets the ocean, a sullen, blotted-out void.
Clark stares into the distance.
“Here is right where it stood,” he says. “Where it looked down at me.”
I say nothing, bearing witness to a reverie I can barely understand.
A cool gust of wind washes over us. The rain increases.
“Let’s go,” Clark says, coming out of his trance. “We’ll follow the creek back.”
“The creek?” I say. “But you said there’s bears there. Why don’t we go back down the rock face?”
“Too slippery now from the rain.”
Clark heads back into the forest and marches in the opposite direction from which we came. I follow behind him, barely able to keep up. We come to the edge of a steep ravine, the slopes of which are filled with colonies of devil’s club, a spiky shrub as tall as a man. We skirt around the sharp-spined, broad-leaved plant, grasping at smaller trees and shrubs to avoid slipping down the hill in the ever-intensifying downpour.
We reach the bottom of the ravine, a narrow gully between the moss-encrusted walls of two mountains. We’re completely drenched. All around us, a nightmarish tangle of salal and salmonberry bushes rises above our heads, partly concealing enormous conifers reaching for the narrow opening of sky above the gorge. We can hear the nearby creek running, but it is nowhere to be seen.
Clark, exhaling plumes of foggy breath, scours the surroundings. Suddenly his eyes dart left. There is a rustling in the bushes up the gulch. It’s followed by the sound of something heavy moving.
Da-thump. Da-thump. Da-thump.
Fear clenches my chest. Clark remains frozen, his head cocked in the direction of the sound.
Da-thump.
There is something near us, waiting, watching, listening. I pick up what I think is a gamy animal smell mingling with the aroma of drenched evergreen. Clark takes hold of his gun with both hands. In almost zero visibility, the weapon offers little, if any, protection. Clark turns to me with an expression of muted alarm, trying to gauge my reaction.
Then: Da-thump! Da-thump! Da-thump!
“Go!” Clark yells, dashing through the berry bushes to a faint game trail. As I run behind him into the thicket sharp branches tear at my face and rain gear. All I can see is Clark’s backside a few feet in front of me.
A heaving, growling bark explodes around us.
WOOF-WOOF-WOOAHHF!
WOOF-WOOF-WOOAHHFFF!
I break into a sprint with my arms held up to my head to protect myself from whatever beast is nearly upon us. The barking resumes—louder now—and the terror spikes. Then I realize it’s Clark making the noises. He stops and cups his hands to his mouth.
“Hey, bear! Hey, grizzly-grizzly-grizzly!” he hollers at the top of his voice, a ploy to ward off any bears nearby.
Clark drops his arms and ducks into a waist-high tunnel-like trail in the brush. We’re forced to crawl on our hands and knees, past sprawling blooms of wet, rotting skunk cabbage, making loud noises, and occasionally having to untangle ourselves from the branches that snag our packs. I realize that at any moment we might be ambushed and mauled by a startled grizzly. I’m awash in regret for what feels like a foolish undertaking—revisiting the perch of a legendary creature that also happens to be in the heart of bear country.
We come into a relatively dry enclosure of gargantuan Sitka spruces. Beneath a few of the trees, the forest floor is packed down. Clark wanders over to one of the impressions and moves his open palm over it.
“Day bed,” he says. “A mother and cub were just here.”
Clark gets up and heads into the younger brushy alder forest at the edge of the spruces, barking and yelping like a man possessed. I follow into yet another gauntlet of thorns. The novelty of exploring one of the last intact wilderness regions on the planet gives way to silent cursing.
And then reprieve. We emerge, bleary-eyed, from the darkness