I'm face to face with a polar bear. The bear is closer than he has ever appeared in my dreams or nightmares, close enough that he only has to lunge to knock my head off. I'm immobilized with fear, not the sort of fear you can reason with, but a caveman terror that boils up out of my nervous system and shuts down every voluntary muscle in my body.
Yet one part of my brain is functioning well enough to register surprise at my reaction. I like bears, and I'm usually not afraid of them. I've had hundreds of encounters with black bears, and feel comfortable travelling on foot through bear country. But this is my first eye contact with Ursus maritimus, and it's not what I anticipated. Polar bears should be white, but this one's fur is coarse and yellowish. Opening his jaws, he reveals a blue tongue and teeth the size of my fingers. He narrows his eyes in an expression that's part bear and part tyrannosaur. I hear a little voice in my head: "You wanted to see a polar bear; well now you're seeing a polar bear."
During bear season, which is generally during October and November, polar bears gather by the hundreds along the seacoast near Churchill, Man., waiting for the ice to form on Hudson Bay, so they can go out and hunt seals. Unlike most bears, they do the majority of their feeding during the winter. Once the ice breaks up in the spring, they go ashore and spend the summer lying around, conserving their energy. The bears that gather near Churchill may look indolent, but that's only a pose. Once the bay freezes, they hit the ice and reassume their prowling role as apex predator, the terrestrial world's largest and most efficient carnivore.
The bears attract tourists from around the world. Churchill is such a popular destination in the fall that it's just about impossible to get a hotel or airline reservation unless you book many months ahead. I didn't, so I've got a good excuse for taking the train. Unlike air travel, going by train affords the feeling of actually covering ground, and as we head north the landscape grows increasingly more desolate. The weather changes slowly too. When we boarded in Winnipeg, it was warm and sunny, but when we arrive in Churchill two days later, we bundle up in parkas and mitts before stepping into the wintry air.
After spending my first day visiting the Eskimo Museum and other local attractions, I sign on for the Churchill equivalent of a double-decker bus tour — a bear-watching trip on a tundra buggy. The buggies, unique to Churchill, look like entrants in a Monster School Bus rodeo. Their huge tires are designed to minimize damage to the delicate tundra, and their three-metre height creates a safe distance between tourists and bears.
No sooner have we climbed aboard and lumbered out of the parking lot than the buggy jerks to a stop beside a snoozing polar bear. I go out on the viewing platform and look down at the medium-sized male bear curled up in the lee of a willow clump, eyes half closed, waiting disconsolately for winter. Like animals in an African game preserve, the polar bears of Churchill have learned to ignore the mechanized behemoths lumbering among them. But our tour guide emphasizes that this snoozing bear would no doubt react very differently if any of us dismounted.
