On a Sunny Day in Alaska

An old two-lane road in Alaska ran along the shores of the Cook Inlet and was called the Kenai Highway. From the city of Anchorage it coursed south about two hundred miles to its end at the fishing port of Homer. On a sunny day in early September Mick Bowman left camp just outside of Homer, driving his old pickup truck north toward Anchorage. It was the end of a summer he spent working with a group of friends. Together they built a log cabin for a homesteader family that lost their home in a fire the previous winter. The project completed, Mick was traveling on the first leg of a five thousand mile journey that would take him to Todos Santos, Mexico, where he would join other friends for the winter. At the age of twenty-seven, Bowman had a life filled with romance and adventure and he knew it… or certainly believed it. Mick was also an alcoholic.

Bowman liked to get drunk. He liked being drunk. Mick loved the sense of total abandon that came with inebriation. The blackouts, the chaos, even the hangovers were costs he gladly paid for the wild sensibilities and the oblivion that booze provided. Being affable by nature and well able to hold his liquor, people who knew Mick were rarely offended by his behavior when he drank, which was often. The night before he left for Anchorage, he drank a lot of Scotch during a farewell gathering with his friends. Before he left camp the next morning he intimated to a friend, “I’ve got a hangover you could subdivide.” But this was all right with him, he appreciated the stillness a hangover brought to his senses. He would be oddly silent at these times, simply observing, listening, feeling peaceful. 

Joining Mick on the drive to Anchorage were two young men who also worked on the cabin build for the Arneson family. They were school friends of Julie Arneson, the homesteaders eldest daughter. Scott Hart and Sam Winters, both 19, had been enthusiastic helpers during the last two weeks of the construction project. They looked up to Mick and enjoyed the stories he told of his colorful life. Mick liked the two young men for their industry and apparent decency. Driving through the Alaskan wilderness that day Bowman was quiet and subdued. Scott and Sam took their cue from him and rode in silence.

When the travelers were less than fifty miles from Anchorage Scott said, “Look. Grizzlies.” Mick let up on the gas as his eyes searched for the creatures.

“Yup,” Bowman said, and slowed the truck, pulling off the road onto the gravel shoulder. The three men exited the truck and stood next to it as they observed the bears. An adult female and two half-grown cubs were sitting on top of an old abandoned railroad bed, running parallel to and about fifty yards from the road. A deep gully separated the train bed from the road.

While Scott and Sam watched the bears, Mick walked around the truck and opened the drivers door. From behind the front seat he pulled out an aluminum tripod and also his Bolex 16 millimeter movie camera. He proceeded to bolt the camera to the tripod. Carrying the rig around the truck Mick told the young men, “I’m going to get some shots.”

“Be careful,” said Sam.

“Don’t make any sounds,” said Mick.

Slowly, Mick sidestepped down the roadside bank of the gully, keeping his eyes on the bears. There was a tall stand of trees that provided shadows over the ground he was moving on and a modest breeze blew from the North. Mick figured he was in shadows and downwind from the grizzlies so they probably wouldn’t see him or smell him. Scott and Sam watched Mick with growing anxiety.

“Jesus,” said Sam.

“Yah,” said Scott. 

From the bottom of the gully the old railroad bed rose up about fifteen feet. It presented a steep incline of hard packed gravel. Any healthy fear Bowman might have felt in these moments were muted by the numbing effects of his hangover and supplanted with a wild desire to push the limits of the natural world. Still, he ascended the gravel bank with caution and stealth.

“Goddam it,” Sam whispered as he put his hand on Scott’s shoulder.

“Shhh,” Scott replied.

The two men stood still, transfixed by the spectacle they were witnessing. 

Mick arrived at the top of the railroad bed, and seeing the bears hadn’t reacted to his presence he opened the legs of the tripod and carefully set it on the ground. Just then his left foot, which was braced on a large stone at the edge of the bed slipped as the stone dislodged and shot away. Instantly the three bears looked over at Mick, rose up on their haunches and charged towards him. Seeing this, Mick pushed the roll button on his Bolex movie camera for just over a second before he swooped up the tripod and went running down the embankment.

From beside the truck , Scott and Sam watched in horror.

As Bowman stumbled down the embankment the grizzlies let out a roar that went beyond sound. It was as if an electric charge went through Mick’s body and as he reached the bottom of the gully his legs went completely numb. With three grizzly bears in hot pursuit, Mick Bowman fell flat on his face in the mud.

In this mad moment, unable to move his legs, Mick was overcome with irony. For years as a young child he had a recurring nightmare of being chased down in forests by wild animals. Now it was really happening. With his face in the mud, he looked over at his movie camera, no more than a foot away from his eyes. He saw the three Zeiss lenses on the front turret of the camera, packed with mud from the fall. 

“Oh my God,” he thought, “I’ve ruined my lenses!”

It seemed like an eternity before Bowman felt his legs again. With clumsy movements he got up to climb out of the gully and onto the road. Glancing back over his shoulder he saw the three bears ambling back to where they had been sunning themselves. Mick approached the truck and the two young men.

“Man that was close,” said Scott.

“Yah,” said Mick.

“Y’know Mick,” said Sam, “we really should have had the camera…” Sam held his hands up making a frame with his thumbs and forefingers aimed at the bears. “… because that was the shot.”

Years later Bowman, who by then had quit drinking, read an article in a wildlife magazine, which posited a theory that a grizzly bear will sometimes break off a charge if its prey lays flat on the ground. And as Mick always said, “I’d rather be lucky than smart.”