Timothy Treadwell (1957–2003)

For a long time I didn’t want to read this book, because I thought the author’s later death from the bear would make it a sad reading for me. However, I’m glad I have read it after all. Treadwell mentioned in this book that he was well aware of the risk and accepted it as a price he might have to pay for his experiences of camping near and observing wild brown bears every summer. Moreover, I learned that he’d been pursuing a self-destructive path of alcohol addiction till he fully committed to dedicating himself to the study and appeal for conservation of grizzlies. So thanks to his newfound passion for bears and unconventional lifestyle, he at least had 13 enjoyable and meaningful years.

I got the impression from reading some Amazon reviews of this book, that some readers decided that he must have had a death wish. However, this was not at all the feeling I got from this book. Moreover, I think that if a person who spent every summer among several dozens grizzlies really wished to “commit suicide by bear,” he wouldn’t need to wait 13 years to find it. Nor does it seem to me that he liked to live dangerously. He makes it clear how scared he was during and after each close call and how long it took him to compose himself afterwards. He also obviously did his best not to get into such situations and to diffuse them if they arose nonetheless, in ways which didn’t involve hurting the bears in any way. As he puts it in this book, he felt that since it was he who’d chosen to come to their home, he had to play by their rules, and so he even asked the pilot who took him to his campsites not to alert authorities if he (Treadwell) got mauled, because they usually kill bears who’ve killed a human.

A number of readers also criticized him for getting bears habituated to people, and that is certainly a concern, although it’s lessened by the fact that he did this in protected wilderness where ordinary people don’t go (or at least shouldn’t, because it’s dangerous, regardless of whether bears, wolves, lynx and other animals there are habituated to people or not).

One Amazon reviewer also wrote that biologists were jealous of him because he accomplished much more than they did in far fewer years – and without a fancy or any degree (and subjecting animals to highly intrusive, but currently very popular methods involving tranquilizers and radio collaring). After having read a number of other Amazon reviews, this theory seems very plausible to me. I also got the feeling that many people don’t seem able to accept the fact that there are some people for whom preserving their lives isn’t the top priority (unless they’re risking their lives for other humans, that is). But Timothy Treadwell’s book makes it clear that he led a life that he found fulfilling and very enjoyable, and that for him it was worth the risk. Whether someone else would have made a similar choice is beside the point. His life was his own. In fact, he said in this book that he didn’t want other people to imitate him. His purpose in writing it was to make his readers feel as if they knew the bears he had met too and started caring about them – and by extension about bears in general.

Personally I’ve fond this book very well-written, informative, memorable, humorous and generally highly enjoyable to read. At first Treadwell turned to the wilderness to avoid the temptations of civilization which had proven too seductive for him, but gradually he found that he preferred living in the wild, and his happiness is catching. In fact, for me this book perfect for armchair traveling – I didn’t wish I were actually in his shoes, but I loved feeling myself in them while reading his book. It was also very interesting for me to learn about bears’ lifestyles in different places, their interactions with each other, their seasonal migrations from one food source to another and ways they employ to obtain food. I was also fascinated by a wide range of bear personalities the author had encountered and described. The one negative thing I can say about his death is that it was a great loss to the world.… (mehr)