“I hear it’ll be busy here later.”
She gives me a half-nod, half-grimace. “The cruise ships are a double-edged sword. We need them, you know? Their admission fees and donations allow us to keep this place running. I’m grateful for that…but…”
“But maybe it gets to be a little much?” I ask. “All those tourists descending on you en masse?”
“We have over 20,000 visitors per year,” she says, “and most of them from May to September, so you can imagine it gets a little busy.” She sighs. “Still, like I said, I’m grateful. This place, like a lot of businesses in Sitka, wouldn’t survive without the tourists. We learn to live with them.”
I hold up my phone. “Is it okay if I record us talking? I know I won’t remember everything you say, and I don’t want to misquote you.”
Her lips twitch. “Can I approve what you write before you hit publish?”
“No. I’m…I’m sorry. I can get you copies of my article, of course, but the content and style of the piece comes from me.”
“Then I don’t—”
“But, Heather,” I say. “I don’t want to hurt this place. We’re planning a big fundraiser in Seattle so we can raise money and donate to what you’re doing here. All I want to do is bring awareness to the Fortress of the Bear and shed some light on what’s been going on recently in terms of wild bear attacks. I’m not up here to make trouble. I promise.”
“Like I said, we can’t survive without donations.” Heather gives me a long look, then nods. “I guess I’ll have to trust you.”
“You won’t regret it,” I promise her.
As she leads me through an area of new construction, she explains that they’re building a new visitor center, which—despite the chaos outside—is really taking shape from the inside. In fact, I get my first glimpse of the bears through an enormous window already in place.
“First orcas! Now bears!” I exclaim, looking at two brown bears through the plexiglass window.
“Those two are Nuka and Nikiski, our newest. They’re twin sisters from Seward.”
As I watch them scamper around a large enclosure together, I ask Heather some questions. “You said something about most of your bears being abandoned? I read about one set of siblings whose mother was killed in the kitchen of a resort hotel.”
Heather nods. “You’re talking about Killisnoo and Chaik. But it wasn’t a resort, just a fishing lodge outside of a small village called Angoon on Admiralty Island. Their mother broke into the kitchen looking for food and surprised the chef. He shot her, orphaning them.”
“And would park rangers have really murdered the cubs if you hadn’t stepped in?”
Heather’s brows furrow. “We prefer the word “euthanize.” You have to understand: if the mother bear can’t teach her babies how to hunt, they’ll starve. So, yes, it used to be the policy to euthanize orphaned cubs. That’s part of the reason this place is so special. We’re giving abandoned cubs another option: a chance to live.” She gestures for me to follow her. “Come with me.”
I follow her up a brand-new wooden staircase to a balcony overlooking two enclosures. She leans her elbows on the railing and point to two brown bears bathing in the morning sun side by side.
“Killisnoo! Chaik! Come on over here! Come on, guys! I want you to meet someone!”
They look up at the same time, their intelligent eyes focusing on Heather. Lumbering over to us, they stand up on their hind legs and put their paws together as though praying.
“You’re hungry, huh? How about a snack?” Heather grins at me. “We teach them a bit of sign language so they can communicate with us. Praying hands means they want food.”
If seeing orcas suddenly come up for air twenty minutes ago shocked me, this information knocks the wind out of me. “Are you kidding me? They’re—they’re speaking to you?”
“Uh-huh,” she says, pulling out a bucket of apples and lettuce heads from under a display table. “Bears are very smart.”
“When Chaik came to us, he was just over a hundred pounds. Now, he’s over a thousand.” She throws an apple to Killisnoo and gives the other to me. “Want to feed Chaik?”
“Yes!”
I take the apple and throw it into the enclosure, watching the massive, majestic animal fall to all fours, reach for the apple with one mitt-like paw and lift it to his mouth to take a big bite.
Maybe a trip to Alaska is just what the doctor ordered.
Leigh’s words slide through my head, and for the first time since Bryce dumped me, I take a deep breath and breathe easier. As Toby-from-the-airport pointed out, my life in Seattle isn’t perfect. But I saw whales in the wild this morning and just fed a bear out of my hand. It’s almost enough to make a girl start believing in magic again.
I think you might be right, Leigh and Toby, I think, following Heather to another enclosure where she wants to introduce me to three black bears. I think this trip is exactly what I needed.