He is Ursus Arctos Middendorffi and his size and strength are worthy of such a lengthy name, but I shall name him Kodi. He is an adult Kodiak brown bear. Now when I say he is an adult that is only just correct. It was only two years ago, in his third year of life, that his mother drove him off to fend for himself. He has spent the winter in solitary hibernation and it was in April of this year that he staggered from his den, yawning and stretching; to face the world as an adult. He weighs around seven hundred and fifty pounds. With good fortune he will be far heavier and stronger when he slips into his den in late October to sleep the cold winter away.
It is now late May and he has spent the time since he woke feeding on grasses, sedges and the flowering plants of the Kodiak archipelago. Occasionally he found the remains of a deer or a mountain goat that had missed its leap or was too weak to survive in this savage landscape. He will feed on such carrion but is disinclined to give his energies to the pursuit of such creatures live. He is also quite partial to a morsel of seaweed. Nowhere on Kodiak is more than fifteen miles from the sea and even in his small territory there is a stretch of coast that provides a valuable spring and autumn food supply. Most people think of him as the largest of the bears in the world and a voracious carnivore. Yes, he is big and when he is at his greatest he may stand ten feet tall when on his hind legs and five feet when on all fours. He may reach over fifteen hundred pounds. Yet for all his size and power he is an omnivore and spends more of his life feeding on vegetation than on meat.
On this day he stands and sniffs the air. He surveys the majesty of the Sitka spruce that blanket the hillsides around him. He has lived in this place for only five years but some of these trees have seen more than thirty times that number. They soar to seventy-five metres, their trunks so broad that, large as he is, he could not reach around their five metre girths. Their pendulous cones dangle beyond his reach and sway in the breeze.
He sniffs the air. Will today be the day that he has waited for, for so long? Kodi has good eyesight. He sees well in the dark and in the bright day but mostly he trusts his nose above all his senses. Someone once said, “A pine needle fell in the forest. The eagle saw it. The deer heard it. The bear smelled it.” He trusts his nose and his nose tells him that today may just be the day. There is on the air a something, just a faint and subtle something. Sometimes it is there and sometimes it melts away before it can be fully sensed. Kodi shuffles off into the trees. He sniffs and snuffles. He pauses and raises his snout to the breeze. Then he moves on, on towards the river for he knows that there he will find what he seeks, if it is to be found.
Through the dappled shade of the Sitka he moves. Now he can hear the river. He is heading for a place he knows well. The waters tumble over rocks and into shallow pools that glint and shimmer in the bright sunlight. The water froths among the rocks and foams and fizzes.
As he emerges from the trees, his eyes confirm what his nose had hinted at. Among the foam and froth and the sparkling water there are other momentary glints and flashes. These flickering gleams move against the waters rapid flow. Shapes flit above the surface and flop beneath again as the shivering light catches the bodies of what Kodi has waited for. The salmon have arrived. At last they have reached the heights of the Kodiak River where they will spawn and begin the long journey of the salmon from egg to alevin to fry to smolt and on to adulthood and then the return to their birthplace to begin the weary cycle again. Kodi knows nothing of that and cares less. To him this day brings the best time of the year.
Now he will feed well and build up the bulk of his weight. Now he will taste the luscious flesh of the salmon, first the red and in a few weeks the pink and the chum, the dog salmon. Later the King salmon will come, the Chinook with its blue-grey back and its silvery sides, the small irregular spots on its back and dorsal fin and the lobes of its tail. The spawning adults take on a maroon to olive colour. Whatever the colour the taste is sublime to Kodi. Fifty pounds of fish will leap and dive through these waters where he will be waiting.
He will stand in these foaming, bubbling waters and watch for the flash of fish. His powerful paws will crash into the water to flip the fish up into the air shimmering in the sunlight to flap on the shore, gasping. His jaws will reveal the crimson flesh as he rips and tear, feeding greedily of nature's bounty.
If this is a good year and the fish are plentiful he will spend the day here and stagger home sated. If the harvest is poor he will work into the night, gleaning what he can while the salmon run.
The last of the salmon, the coho, will arrive in the autumn. These are smaller fish whose arrival will mark the coming of the year's end. When they have finished their spawn, the weather will be growing colder. Kodi’s diet will return to the berries of the woodland, a different salmon, the salmonberry, and the elderberry, cranberry, bearberry and crowberry. The year winds down and sleep time draws near.
But Kodi is not thinking of that at this moment. He is thinking of the food that is fighting its way to his river. The larder is open, and he is more than ready for lunch. As he eyes the waters for the slick movement of his food, another thought slides through his mind. This year he will heed the call that has brought these salmon to his river, that call that nature brings to all living things, the call to breed. He is not alone in this wilderness. He has seen and heard the others of his kind. They are never far away. He has heard the woofs and moans and growls of others. This year he will seek out a sow of his own. The call of nature is on the salmon and now it is also on Kodi. It is a call that will not be denied.
