Grizzly Maze Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession With Alaskan Bears

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Into the Maze ?Ready? pilot Gary Porter's voice crackled over the headset. From the copilot's seat I nodded. We dropped in a smooth arc, losing altitude until at last the floats settled in with a hissing thrum. As we taxied down Upper Kaflia Lake I reflected that, considering this was Alaska's Katmai National Park, where spectacular scenery is commonplace, this was a rather ordinary little valley: a narrow lake maybe a mile and a half long, cradled by a pair of upswept, undulating ridges. Dense clumps of alder and willow started at the water's edge and clung to the slopes, fading into stone and streaks of volcanic ash. Three weeks ago the land would have blazed with autumn colors; but this was early October, and the land was fading to brown, turning inward, waiting for snow. ?That's the place up ahead,? said Gary, and I fumbled with the camera gear in my lap. As the DeHavilland Beaver coasted in toward shore, engine silent now, we could see an odd splash of white in the brush. Clad in hip boots, Gary and I swung open the doors and stepped down onto the floats. From there I could read the top lines of one notice: DANGER BEAR-CAUSED FATALITY UNDER INVESTIGATION The other sign was a map crosshatched with shaded areas. Strung from a thirty-foot section of white cord, the two notebook-sized, laminated sheets flickered in the breeze, as if somehow they could contain a sweep of country spanning four million acres.This was the place where Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard had died just five days before'attacked, mauled, and eaten outside of their tents during a violent rainstorm. Come out here, I'm being killed out here! Play dead! .... Fight back! Their desperate struggle for life had been captured on a camcorder's audiotape, starting with cries for help and fading into high-pitched screams. A day later, would-be rescuers, hoping to find someone alive, had been menaced by bears at close range and shot and killed two, including a thousand-pound male whose stomach was filled with flesh, bone, and clothing. But today, except for those fluttering signs, this grass-crowned knoll, rimmed by a dense curtain of alder, seemed just like the valley: pretty but unremarkable, a tiny island adrift in an ocean of land. As sunlight filtered through high clouds, casting everything in a luminous golden light, I struggled to imagine the horror that had taken place here.Then the soft breeze eddied, bearing the stench of death'a sickly-sweet, overpowering odor that cut through any illusion of serenity: the rotting carcasses of the bears the park rangers had shot. Shards of bear bone and clumps of hide lay scattered around the grassy swale before us, just a few yards away. Scavenging magpies and ravens called back and forth. The nightmare had been real. And this was where it had happened.The questions I'd been wrestling with for the past five days swirled up again, sharp as the scent of carrion. The facts didn't add up. After twenty-five years living and traveling in bear country, first as a packer for a big game guide, then as a hunter, finally as a photographer and writer, I knew the danger posed by bears well enough. Attacks, while always a possibility, were isolated instances, and experience tended to tip the odds in your favor. If Timothy Treadwell wasn't experienced, who was? He'd spent thirteen summers among the big coastal brown bears here, and claimed to have an empathic connection to them'a gift, admirers said, that at times approached magic. He gave the bears names, claimed to understand their postures and vocalizations, moved among them as one of their own. Yet, in the history of the Katmai Park and National Monument, stretching back over eighty-five years, not one person had ever been seriously mauled, let alone killed'until Timothy Treadwell. The apparent contradiction was cause enough for head scratching