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I live in southeast Alaska, where we have a relatively healthy population of coastal brown bears. When we go into the woods, there is always a chance a bear cou
by japhyr 8y ago
I live in southeast Alaska, where we have a relatively healthy population of coastal brown bears. When we go into the woods, there is always a chance a bear could be nearby.
Your first encounter with a brown bear in the wild can be unnerving. It's a really different feeling to see an animal that could easily kill you in the woods, without a wall or a fence between you and that animal. It's really humbling, and makes the woods feel entirely different than most other woods I've ever been in.
It's not that hard to be safe. You make noise when you're in brushy areas, and you stay aware of your surroundings as long as you're in bear country. If you're camping, there are well-established routines that keep bears from messing with your camping area. You keep in mind where bears are in their annual cycles; are they relatively well-fed, or are they hungry and looking anywhere they can for food?
I like the balance of doing technical work with the experience of walking in the woods with bears. The projects I work on are important, but they're not life-safety-critical. If one of my servers goes down, no one's going to die. Having interacted with brown bears at close range, a server going down is a relatively low-stress event.
I wish there were more wild areas left. The woods in the lower 48 feel empty after living in forests that still have the top predators alive and healthy.
- oldstrangers 8y agoWas out in the wilderness on Vancouver Island, a place with the highest concentration of cougars in North America. You're right, it is a vastly different experience walking around an area like that knowing you're just a fragile voyeur in another animal's environment (especially something as silent and murderous as a big cat).
- lisper 8y agoI live on the San Francisco peninsula. A mountain lion killed a deer in our back yard once, and then the buzzards came and cleaned it up. Not that I wish to dispute the premise of the OP in the slightest, but you can still find wildness in some unexpected places.
- dmach 8y agoI think the ecological issues we're facing are more serious and underappreciated that the overall warming problem. They are linked but ultimately we can survive longer as it gets warmer, just more alone. If you do a search for ecological the result presumes you mean environmental a lot. Pollution, plastics and habitats need very urgent attention as well has CO2/Methane. It is also one of the big results people are freaking out about the changing climates but stay away from mentioning it much as many don't see it affecting us directly. Technology may drive us enough to replace the untouched wildness essential for nature. I've heard the only large area becoming wilder is Chernobyl and it's hard to think about what's next for Brazil and pretty much everywhere. We have to consider what's left to be land of the highest value and compensate people (less the 0.1%) who are affected by that decision. This may be of interest https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/21/alaska-stand-for-salmon-habitat-campaign https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/21/alaska... I hope the bears keep tourists away.