Can You Whistle?

Mavis Lorenz can. She was the oldest person on our Wild Bear Adventure, 81, and as full of energy as any of us. She could whistle whole melodies in a lovely trilling style. She said her mother taught her how. I've never heard any other woman who could whistle like that. Not just a bar, but an entire melody. She liked to whistle songs for Jon and me to see if we could guess the title. But she would only do show tunes, like "oklahoma". She was insulted when I asked her to do "My Old Kentucky Home."

Taking a peek on google today, I see she's a well known character on google. She has a great "hee hee hee" laugh too. She even climbed Everest to base camp K2
or was it K3? when she was in her 60s as a single woman with a sherpa, entering through Pakistan. Earlier in life she'd been a p.e. teacher. whew I bet she was tough.

Pictures from Knight's Inlet

There are a lot of pictures here, but I thought I'd post them in a slide show. View what you want.

Here's a link to the same pictures bigger, on flickr.

Look Who's Back in Town

We had a most wondrous time at the Knight Inlet Lodge in British Columbia. We saw many black bears and a handful of grizzlies too, all from small boats at a very close distance. I'll post more pictures as the week goes by.

Winter stayed longer than usual in the area, and most of the grizzlies hadn't woken from hibernation yet, but the ones we saw were magnificent.

We were sure we'd like the wildlife sightings, but had no idea we'd have so much fun with the other people who'd come on this Vital Ground trip.

I was surprised that for the first time in my life I could remember people's names, quite well. I wondered if this was going to be permanent. Jon said maybe it's like reverse Alzheimer's. Wouldn't that be a treat? Or not?



This is an osprey. Bald eagles were almost as common as crows. They stole this osprey's fish right after he did a dive bomb to fetch it.

I really enjoyed reading all your posts on my future/past blog last week-- I read them last night after we got home at ten. We were a week without newspaper, radio, computer, phone etc. Totally unplugged. It was great.

Wonder what it's like!

We're here by the red spot. Hope we're seeing grizzlies. Hope we're not falling into the water. Hope my camera works and I can show you wondrous bear pictures next week. Have you ever seen a bear in the wild?

Bart the Bear

About 14 years ago we attended the first Vital Ground get together in Montana. It was before the movie celebrities got involved.

The guy who was the inspiration for Hayduke in "Monkey Wrench Gang", Doug Peacock, was there. So was Jean Craighead George, the writer. Her brothers were some of the first in the usa to study grizzlies. It was a very wonderful weekend.

This is a picture of Doug Seus with his much loved movie bear Bart. Bart passed away a few years ago. Doug did a training demonstration for us all, with Bart, that was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced. He trained Bart using baked beans , Hawaiian Punch and love. In this shot he's ladling the baked beans. You can see a can of punch in his belt pack.

Web Cam of where we're going

I'm testing this to see if it refreshes during the day. This is the floating lodge where we will be staying next week on our Wild Bear Adventure.

We imagined we'd travel lots after Dinah left for college, (or rather Jon imagined that), but the reality of flying both financially and physically, plus psychololgical abuse at the airport, has made us slow to move. This is our big trip for this year.

Wild Bear Adventure

On Sunday morning we're flying to Campbell River, B.C. Canada for the Wild Bear Adventure. We're staying at Knight Inlet Lodge and hoping to see GRIZZLY BEARS! And maybe orcas too.

It's the time of year when the bears have just come out of hibernation and the cubs are walking with the sows. The trip is sponsored by Vital Ground, an organization that saves land for grizzlies through easements and purchase. We'll be hearing lots of presentations on grizzlies. The lodge is floating, and we'll mostly be in boats and kayaks. The last time I was in a kayak I flilpped it over, so Jon's a little worried about that.

We went to a Vital Ground conference many years ago in Montana, but the only bear we saw was Bart the Bear.

I'm preparing blog posts for every day I'll be away, so you won't all just disappear. We get back the following Saturday, with no communication possible in the meantime.

The illustration was the cover for a bear book my mother wrote and her cousin illustrated, sometime in the 1940's.