Customer Reviews

The Great Bear: Contemporary Writings on the Grizzly

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I've been nursing a Grizzly Bear infatuation since seeing Wernor Herzog's riveting documentary on Timothy Treadwell. Last year I even went to Montana's Glacier National Park in search of them and never did see one. So I've consoled myself with learning all I can about these mighty bears through literature.

And the essays contained in this volume are literature, some of the finest nature writing you will find. Included are writings from Edward Abbey, that irreverent rascal and author of "The Monkey Wrench Gang" and "Desert Solitaire"; Frank Craighead, a maverick in the field of bear studies who invented the radio collar tracking device; A.B. Guthrie, who wrote "Big Sky" which was made into a movie in the 1950's - he also won an award for his screenplay of "Shane"; Aldo Leopold, an environmentalist ahead of his time and author of "A Sand County Almanac"; Doug Peacock, a champion in the corner of the Grizzly for these modern times. And many others.

All of these essays are by men who saw a need for the preservation of Grizzly Bears, and indeed all wildlife; men who were troubled by needless villainization and subsequent slaughter of these valuable icons of a wild America. Men who were environmentalists before environmentalism was cool, they studied, tracked, wrote about, defended and sought protection for America's big brown bears.

One of my favorite essays in this volume is "Escudilla" by Aldo Leopold, where he mourns the passing of the last Grizzly Bear to roam there (Arizona), who was shot and killed in the 1930's. Leopold was responsible for forming the nation's first wilderness area, the Gila, in 1924, as he was deeply disturbed by the government's assault on and annihilation of Grizzly Bears in the Southwest, to "keep it safer for people". Of the mountain Escudilla he writes: "Escudilla still hangs on the horizon, but when you see it you no longer think of bear. It's only a mountain now."

I also very much enjoyed A.B. Guthrie's musings on the bears. Living at the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness area in Montana, he writes: "I suppose people not of the Front think it odd of us, or at least eccentric, to live where we do, away from cities and the offerings of cities, away even from a small town where we could have close neighbors and take part in community activities. Maybe we are a bit strange, but I look to the north and the south, where foothills rise, est to the great roll of the high plains and west to the mountains and my vision site of Ear Mountain, and good medicine lies all around."

I could go on offering quotes and descriptions of each essay but it would make for a very long review, and surely you get the idea of the quality of writing in all the essays. There is a brief biography of each author at the beginning of every essay which are very interesting and you get a good impression of just who these men are as you read their writings. Many are haunting, some are amusing, and all of them are worthy of reading if you are interested in the evolution of the movement to preserve the Grizzly Bear. There are lots of fascinating facts about the bears and several accounts of attacks, but if you are looking for something excessively lurid and violent, these essays are not for you. Call them the thinking person's guide to Grizzlies.