The Dean River is where I would eventually meet Dick Cheney – which is a whole other story – however on my first trip there I was placed on a little spit of a gravel island to fish a run down one side of it, whilst my guide took my two companions upstream in the jet boat.
The noise of the rapids drowned out everything else and I was absorbed in my fishing and a while later I turned and looked upstream.
There, floating down on to the end of the little island, was something that looked like a log, but wasn’t. It was the top of a Grizzly’s head!
The bear began to walk out onto the island and I had nowhere to go except into the rapids.
Grizzly bears are short sighted but it knew something was there and it looked right at me and I looked right back, rooted to the spot. At that moment I heard the jet boat start up – the guide had spotted the bear and came hurtling down the river with the big jet engine wide open and the bear heard the noise and took off, fortunately away from me.
Later the guide said that had I not seen the bear I would have heard it when it was right behind me, turned and screamed, upon which the bear would have smacked me back and forth with its claw saying:
‘Don’t………Scream!’
They seemed to think that was really funny!
There is another story I could tell you about an amazing woman we met up there one year, backpacking through that wild country and the bears.
Maybe I’ll post it sometime, please check back.
Jess Miller.
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