Retrospective bears

It is becoming easier day by day to live in the present and take pleasure from things and situations that would go unnoticed. Alternatively it’s all about mundanity and that is not perhaps conducive to blipping. I have been looking back this week, it is a year since I was in Alaska and at that time I had not started to blip – that happened about a month later. And today is the anniversary of the walk to the Bonanza mine in the Copper Rush town of Kennicot. The Bonanaza Mine trail was probably the most challenging walk I have done in a while – around 11 miles and 4,000’ ascent, starting at around 3,500’. I recall the last mile or so in steep deep snow covered ground. Apart half of the group opted for this. It was freezing at the top and we ate a picnic lunch in a rickety shelter with our gloves on. We were inwardly glowing. The descent, which I often find more difficult, was fine.

The blip was taken a couple of days previously when we were in the Kenai Fjords National Park. Three black bears, a mother and two springers (last years cubs) foraging for seaweed on the shore. In keeping with the bear theme I watched Grizzly Man (2005) – an idiosyncratic documentary about Timothy Treadwell (he changed his name) who lived, and of course died (along with his girlfriend who was scared of bears) with a tribe of grizzly bears in Alaska, Kodiak Island. If I ever return to Alaska this is where I would like to go. Perhaps.

The sun came through mid afternoon and after my long walk yesterday I enjoyed a gentle stroll through Pollok Park.