Visiting The Bear Center

Judy Hedman

When we built our cabin on the Gunflint Trail a few years back, I must admit that I wasn’t exactly a nature girl, especially when it came to wildlife. For someone who grew up in a Minneapolis suburb where seeing a deer was a strange and magical experience, spending time in Minnesota’s deepest, darkest wilderness was a bit out of the comfort zone at first.

Soon, though, I grew enchanted by the creatures that would creep, scurry and hop through our yard — the elegant chipmunks, moody red squirrels, foxes as friendly as dogs. Moose? Bring them on. Even the large and active wolf pack on the Trail didn’t give me pause. But there was one thing that did. Bears. The Gunflint Trail (and the whole of the BWCA for that matter) is full of black bears — animals that campers had to store their food in a tree to deter. Animals that, I had heard, would tear a car apart to get at a single chocolate bar left inside. Animals, with large claws, that would attack if cornered, especially if cubs were nearby.

I began to wonder about getting some bear spray. But then I thought: what good would spray do? If I were close enough to spray a bear in the face, I’d die of fright before the first spritz.

Then, one otherwise ordinary afternoon, something happened to change all of that. We were bustling around the cabin getting ready for dinner, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something large and black ambling down our driveway. Two seconds later, a bear was standing at one of our open windows, looking inside.

I was frozen with fear. Our dog Tundra (a 130-pound Alaskan Malamute) leapt to the window. Good girl! I imagined her big-dog bark chasing the bear away — but she didn’t bark. Instead, she stood, literally nose to nose with the bear, each smelling the other through the screen. Then she put her ears back and began to wag her tail. She was greeting a friend. A moment or so later, the bear wandered off, Tundra went back to chewing on a bone, and I stood there thinking: “This is the ferocious creature I’ve been so worried about?”

Ever since then, I’ve been curious to learn more about bears. I wanted to replace the fear I had with a real understanding of an animal that I could very well run into again, not only at my cabin but in Duluth~Superior as well. So, I contacted Donna Andrews, curator of the North American Bear Center in Ely. These are the folks that brought us Lily’s den cam — a camera installed in the den of a wild bear in Ely — and millions of people worldwide watched as she had cubs. It resulted in a bona fide phenomenon, creating a pack of bear enthusiasts all over the world. They’re active on the center’s website and Facebook page daily, they visit the center, and they help raise funds.

I was set to visit the center during what Donna called a photo shoot. Being in the magazine business, I assumed a professional photographer would be there shooting some shots. Wrong. I arrived at the center and was shown out the back door — and to my surprise, a gaggle of people were standing there, all with their own cameras, while Donna interacted with the bears Lucky, Ted and Honey. The bears were right there. Inches away from us, just beyond a flimsy-looking cable fence that I later learned was electrified. At first, my stomach did a quick flip — was this wise? — but Donna was so calm and the people were so calm and the bears were so calm that I felt calm, too. The bears radiated a gentleness that I didn’t expect.

As I stood near the fence, one of the bears, Lucky, decided he should give me a good sniff. He came right up to me and spent about five minutes sniffing me (I was wondering what he’d do if he didn’t like what he smelled) and then apparently he decided I was okay as Donna fed him a dried apricot. This bear took it from her hand more gently than my dog takes a treat from me.

And then I saw Ted. It’s quite something, for someone who was previously terrified of bears, to be standing just inches away from what may well be the largest black bear that ever lived. When he arrived at the center in 2007, he weighed in at 860.5 pounds — that’s after hibernating, which melted between 180 and 200 pounds from his frame.

Despite his rather intimidating size, Ted is a gentle and calm animal who, according to Donna, prefers loving human contact over food. This was proven to me as I walked with Donna around the perimeter of the habitat, a gorgeous, 2.5 acre wooded site with a pond and lots of places to den. (As Donna explains: “We’re not a zoo that knocks everything down and then tries to create a habitat inside a fence. We just put a fence around a beautiful bear habitat.”)

Ted, on his own side of the fence, walked with us — we had no food to offer, no treat to lure him with. It was as though he was simply eager to be with us and show somebody new around his home. It was an incredible feeling, walking on the path with this enormous bear padding along by my side.

Ted and Honey, Donna told me, came from a private home in Wisconsin where they were kept for several years as pets. Lucky, apparently showed up in somebody’s yard as a cub. None of the three were good candidates to go back into the wild, so now these three friends teach humans about their species just by being themselves — gentle, calm, and loving.

If you’re curious about bears, visit the Bear Center. People come from all over the world to experience this, and it’s right in our own back yard. Sign up for a photo shoot any Friday during the summer months, or simply sit on the deck and watch these three beautiful animals for as long as you’d like. It’s a magical experience you won’t soon forget.