Walking in the Footprints of
Polar Bears

by Michael McBride

Survival, Storytelling, and the Wild Pulse of the Arctic

One of the world’s foremost polar bear experts, my friend and associate Jack Lentfer, is internationally respected by his peers. Here on the sea ice with a dart-drugged ursus maritimus under study and about to be radio-collared. Average weights range from 600 to 1,200 pounds and they stand 8 to 10 feet tall, while females weigh 400 to 700 pounds. Polar bears can live up to 25 years. The largest polar bear on record was a male shot in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, in 1960, weighing 2,209 pounds as measured by helicopter scales.

A polar bear’s smell would alert a seal, its favored food, to its presence, even if these masters of stealth were approaching from downwind. There is a myth that a bear covers its giveaway black nose when stalking, but this has never been documented in the wild.

Few artists have captured the far north better than Fred Machetanz (February 20, 1908 – October 6, 2002). He was an Alaskan painter and illustrator who specialized in depictions of Alaskan scenes, people, and wildlife.

My friend Yemegaq Slwooko told me an ancient story as we sat on her floor in the village of Sivugaq in the Bering Strait, Alaska. A storm raged just beyond the door, its insistency shaking the house. The view through the ice-skinned window spoke volumes about the comfort we enjoyed within as she skinned the white foxes her husband had trapped the day before. Sitting straight-legged, weaving nets or grass baskets, skinning, and butchering game is all done sitting on the floor in the central room. We would call it the living room. Quasag is one name for such places, where, while working, one tells stories to pass on the ancient ways.

“In the culture of my ancestors,” she said, “the greatest gifts we can give or receive are those without material form: songs, dances, and stories.”

On the other side of the world, Alaska’s antipodes, in Africa, an imprisoned !Kung bushman of the Kalahari says that he is “waiting for the moon to turn back, that I may listen to the stories of my people, for I am here in a great city where they have put me in a cage and I do not obtain stories. I listen, watching for a story which I want to hear. I will turn my ears backward to the heels of my feet on which I wait, so that I can feel that a story is in the wind.” Lucky for us, one of the truly great raconteurs, Laurence Van der Post, saved this story for us, never imagining that it would reappear and have poignant relevance in remote Alaska.

Stories have always begun this way, the best ones perhaps told by elders, perhaps enhanced by a full moon and surging tides or the music of a talking river. There may be lightning or the call of owls, a crackling fire whose incense intoxicates. Wolves or lions may be speaking in the distance. Stories can communicate and need to communicate magic, but they need not take place in such exotic settings. The inner search or struggle for self-awareness may place the seeker in the greatest of all wildernesses, that within one’s own heart.

A few days ago, I was invited into the Zion Canyon workplace of a friend, the gifted potter and teacher. He handed me a moist lump of clay and with another in his hands, we each began to shape a sphere. The expectant lump was rounded until smooth. He instructed me to place my foot beside his on the stool in front of the potter’s wheel. Using the kneecap as a form, he gently but authoritatively smacked it on his knee, and I followed suit. Smack, turn, smack, turn, smack, turn. Then, using just our hands, we shaped and turned, lifting the walls, deepening the base. Our attention was directed to uniform thickness until a small crude bowl was formed, not much bigger than the cupped hand.

In those moments, we were as free from care as children. The left brain relaxed as the tactile senses came alive. The earthy smell of the clay was clean and heavy on our hands. The mind is more open when playing. There was a church-like quiet in the room. Motes danced on a beam of sunshine coming through a high window in the studio and encouraged a lightness of approach and freedom from desire and ambition. Basic, elemental, even primeval was this most ancient of creative expressions. In my life, I hope to be as open and expectant as a child at play.

Like the bushman, I will listen for the story. Like the Eskimo, I want to be appreciative of the insubstantial. The song and the dance and the story, real or imagined, hold greater value than we can know. Imagine now your own empty hand reaching out, cupped as if to catch water. I imagined being would be as naked as a sadhu in a Punjab alley whose raiment is only ash from the charnel fires, whose empty bowl is the only possession. To such a one, life itself is such a mysterious blessing that anything which comes to the bowl is like rubies and pearls.

On the opposite side of the earth, my good Cape Town friend Dr. Ian McCallum, brilliant author of Ecological Intelligence, describes a kudu stalking a shadowed shrub from downwind. With beautiful straight-up long curling horns, it favors a bush that is able to release a toxic smell and taste as soon as a kudu begins to graze on its delicious leaves. The clever kudu has learned that it is its smell that triggers the plant’s chemical defense, so it stalks from downwind and browses quickly before the offensive smell and taste is released.

The contrasts within the Alaskan/African Antipodes are nowhere more striking than in the parallels between the Alaskan Inupiat word “Malawi” and the Bantu Chewa word “malaŵí.” When I was with Credo Mutwa in his African homeland, I asked him, “You have an adjoining country called Malawi. Was the country named for its large lake, and what does Malawi mean?”

Malawi in Africa refers to a country in southeastern Africa, and the name itself is derived from the “Maravi” people, a Bantu ethnic group. The word essentially means “flames” in the local Chewa language, possibly referencing the sight of many kilns burning at night. The Maravi were known iron workers. It is the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world by volume and stretches almost the full north-south length of the country itself.

I told Credo about my time with my friends, the Inupiat people above the Arctic Circle, and about being out on the sea ice with my hunting partner, the best-known polar bear hunter in the village of Sivugaq. We were not interested in the polar bear, despite the giant tracks we were walking in, but rather wanted to collect, as we were asked to do, the unusual and little-known Spectacled Eider duck for museum collections in the US and abroad that did not have them.

I considered the opposites of the African Timbavati lion as I walked on the ice in the dinner plate-sized polar bear tracks. The African and Eskimo word Melawi fell from the river of stars in both places I had experienced. How, other than by considering magic, can one accept this impossible coincidence that the African and Alaskan word Melawi are the same?

There was only ice for hundreds of miles in every direction. These were places where the people knew there was an under-ice current collision with an under-ice cliff, which then swirls upward to create a place of open water. These unique eiders are known to gather and overwinter in these places by the thousands. In addition to the rising food-carrying currents, the dabbling, wing-stretching, and paddling movements of the ducks stir the surface water just enough to prevent the forming of ice.

The big man, royally robed before me, was glistening in the heat. He drew on his many encyclopedias of memorized information and said, “Mr. McBride, there are numerous words in African languages that are the same in Inupiat,” and he recited a few. Of the millions of abstract questions I might have asked him, how could he possibly have known that? Credo’s intellect always amazes, dazzles, and leaves speechless those who interact with him.

This was not the first such revelation of his brilliance. Wondering if I could stump him on something obtuse, I asked if he knew anything about the Celtic roots of my children’s names, Morgan and Shannon. He launched, without pausing, into a long-detailed narrative that would have impressed Fiona Salmon or a PhD scholar in the history of Clan Donald of the Western Isles. Credo could have held a chair at Europe’s only Celtic University, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig of Skye in the parish of Kiltearn, Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. He could have been an honored guest at the festive table of the Chief of Clan Munro, Hector William Munro, in his castle home of Foulis. I wonder which of the many rooms would have been provided for Credo and his entourage?

Paths That Cross the Great White Bear

The somewhat random and loosely connected stories and observations that follow concerning polar bears demonstrate that even an Alaskan living far from these great white bears can recall many encounters. Each memory is vivid, perhaps because of the mysterious spiritual power the great white bear holds. I share these stories with respect to highlight how the northern people found uses for the bears beyond what we could imagine.

As supreme opportunists, these great bears can roam hundreds of square miles, wandering the trackless ice beneath the shimmering, multicolored aurora.

Though I live far from their life-supporting sea ice, polar bears have occasionally appeared on the Kodiak Island chain, which has a temperate continental climate. To get there, a bear would have to traverse the ice or shoreline of the Bering Sea, cross the Alaska Peninsula with its towering mountain chain, and swim the 30 miles across the open water of the Shelikov Strait.

I was once asked to escort a well-known author from Outside Magazine who was on assignment to explore exciting winter activities. My Piper PA-12 was equipped with straight skis at the time, so I flew him up to the remote Mountain Lake Camp (loonsonglakelodge.com) to experience the chilly delights of three feet of fresh powder snow. Bush flying on skis in winter is an adventure in itself, with severe cold and landings on frozen lakes, from which we ventured out on cross-country skis following the tracks of wolves, wolverines, and moose. The crackling of kindling splits is a sweet sound when rising in the blackness to start the day, accompanied by the chugging of the little coffee pot. The dancing, multicolored aurora before first light takes your breath away. There is much to love about winter in the bush—I am never disappointed.

I wore a polar bear fur hat made for me by my Arctic Native friends, which I generously loaned to the writer and never saw again. He was thrilled to have the REAL Alaskan experience with such an extraordinary hat! I was proud to own such a heritage piece of traditional village headgear, having seen one only once in an Arctic village. A person could stand in the lobby of the Anchorage International Airport for a year and never see one.

The most exotic polar bear item I ever encountered was the bear’s head, removed in such a way that the hide could be sold as a valuable rug, while the head became a large gathering bowl used for collecting radiola or storing hunters’ equipment or household items. I believe it might have had shamanic use because when you put it over your own head, it draped over your shoulders, plunging you into darkness. Your face aligned where the bear’s was, and light coming through the sewn-shut eyes, nose, and ears allowed your imagination to run wild as you assumed the bear’s spirit.

Shamans could and did become bears. Witness the Peter Kalifornski story of The Kustatan Bear, which terrorized a whole village and could only be killed with a magic bullet blessed and consecrated by a priest or perhaps by the shaman himself. Killing the great bear was killing the shaman who had become the terrible bear, bringing grief and destruction to the village. Shamans didn’t always earn “ice guy” awards.

Another item of clothing that has disappeared is polar bear pants. I have never seen them anywhere but in museums. In the past, they were the merit badge of a brave and successful hunter and of his wife, the skilled seamstress who, with her dexterity and cleverness, showed off her man.

The Power of Rhodiola

Rhodiola (Rhodiola rosea)¹, was named for the rose-like fragrance of its freshly cut root. As a medicinal plant, its use dates back thousands of years in China and Tibet. Its medicinal use by everyone from Vikings to modern athletes and even cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station is well documented. The people mix the leaves and buds of rhodiola with seal and whale fat to ward off scurvy and give them energy. I was struck by the ingenuity driven by necessity when I helped skin a seal by drawing it out through its own mouth. On the “living room-quasiq floor,” this unusual skinning is often done on absorbent, surplus cardboard from the village AC Company General Store. Using a very short knife or a lithic tool like the one I found in Africa that fits perfectly between thumb and index finger, one peels back the lips, pushes the nose up and back, and cuts along the bone to release the skin. It takes a skilled practitioner to get the full hand into the mouth, cutting around the nose, eyes, and ears. It is slow and tedious, with lots of hard pulling as you release the flippers from the body; they remain attached to the hide. The slipperiness of the animal and the hide is so great that some kind of magic seems to come into play to complete the task. There it is: seal hide turned right side out, looking just like a deflated seal on the ice, and beside it—a cherished, delicious dinner with lots of fresh-as-it-gets seal oil. The eyes, ears, and vent are sewn leak-proof tight, and the skin is forcefully stuffed with nunivak, the heart-healthy rhodiola. When the cutting was going on, we took care to leave as much of the blubber or fat on the hide as possible. This live seal-looking container is now buried in the tundra under a cairn of rocks to thwart the sea-hungry sled dogs. The large amount of fat left on the skin breaks down with necrosis, and each bud and blade of the plant, rich in vitamin C, is so needed in this land of nothing green in sight from September to May.

Intuitively, the people knew that the plant could prevent the deadly scurvy. The traditional Inuit diet does include some berries, seaweed, and plants, but a carnivorous diet can supply all the essential nutrients, provided you eat the whole animal and eat it raw. Whale skin and seal brain both contain vitamin C. The Inuit may have a higher genetic tolerance for vitamin C insufficiency.

Clams are very rich in probiotics and vitamin C. People who lived with walrus got them from their stomachs. As filter feeders of phytoplankton and zooplankton, vitamin C from clams is an essential micronutrient in the marine food chain, and it’s carried by copepods and their fecal pellets. This makes copepods a potential pathway for vitamin C to reach higher trophic levels, such as fish larvae.

What has not disappeared from special Arctic attire, however, is the wolverine ruff, sewn circularly around the upturned parka hood. Even as the beards, eyebrows, and eyelashes froze with the cold when using wolf, coyote, or other furs, the wolverine helps to keep the face frost-free.

Considering where, when, and how often these mysterious bears appear in my own space, it is worth translocating for a moment into the ancient Native world to consider the shamanistic view of this animal and perhaps even its power over modern white people like us today. There is a very thin and diaphanous veil separating us from the bear and the shaman. Its thinness is clearly seen as the distance between bear and seal. If the seal were a little faster and more clever, there would be no bears. If the bear were a little more cunning and faster, there might be no seals, thus also with lions and their prey at the antipodes. To consider these separations perhaps requires that we be more open-minded and open-hearted to unexplainable mystery.

Imagination is more important than intelligence, Einstein.?

Thinking beyond current limitations is often more valuable than simply accumulating facts and knowledge alone; it is considered the driving force behind innovation and progress.

Image Credits

Walking in their footprints…
Pixabay Image
Image by Margo Tanenbaum from Pixabay

1. https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-883/rhodiola [↩]

Into the Okavango Delta

by Michael McBride

Into that vast swamp with Chris and Robert McBride
In Botswana’s Okavango Delta—on foot and by mokoro

Bittersweet words—but my only consolation.

Our watery highway was the Boro River system, just northeast of Chief’s Island.

The journey began in Alaska—at the antipodes of Maun. I descended the fifty-two steps from my remote, cliffside home to the high-tide shoreline. Hoisting my single Seda kayak from its cradle on the dock to my shoulder, I clipped on my life vest, sealed my cell phone in a ziplock, and paddled into the rushing tide.

Anchored just offshore sat the eighteen-foot Boston Whaler Outrage—secured in deep water, as always. With tidal shifts reaching up to twenty-four vertical feet in six hours, mooring at the dock is out of the question. Boats must anchor out, where they can rise and fall with the living sea.

The journey began with a thirty-minute drive across open ocean, hoping for calm seas. In rough weather, one doesn’t attempt the mooring at all—it’s safer to stay ashore, away from Neptune’s icy grip. When the southwesterly sea winds rage, launching becomes an hour-long battle against salt spray, the horizon dissolving into white mist.

The nearest boat harbor is in Homer, where—on gentler days—a vessel can rest at a floating dock. From there, a pickup truck carries travelers along one of the world’s longest natural sand spits to the airport a few miles away. But that road is a gamble when the winds rise, sending rocks and logs hurtling through the air. It was not uncommon to be stranded—either on the mainland or at the spit’s end—waiting for nature’s fury to pass.

Next stop: Johannesburg, where I joined my cousin Chris.

From there, we drove four and a half hours to Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, in a friend’s vehicle. Waiting for me was a bed and a glass of wine at the Ambassador’s home—hosted by Melissa Maino, daughter of “The Honorable” Ted, a Reagan appointee and longtime family acquaintance.

I fully expected Chris to sleep in the bushes well beyond the Ambassador’s gate, lest his tattered Harris Tweed introduce unwelcome crawlies into diplomatic quarters.

Arriving there, however, I was surprised to see men in camouflage uniforms with machine guns stationed on the rooftop. Knowing I’d soon be venturing far off-grid, the sight of armed guards stirred some apprehension.

No cause for worry, as it turned out—perhaps just standard State Department policy for safeguarding diplomats in Africa.

The following day, Maun was still six hours away—our route taking us through Francistown, renowned for its ability to tan entire elephant hides.

That final leg by vehicle meant crossing the Makgadikgadi Pans of the Kalahari—a land of relentless daytime heat and desolation. My backpack, packed with bare essentials and first aid, lacked one critical item: a broad-brimmed hat. We searched the few shops along dirt streets, nearly ready to abandon the hunt when—Eureka!—one was found.

Chris’ “kit,” meanwhile, consisted of whatever happened to be in his pockets at that moment—likely kudu biltong and a crumbling rusk.

Wherever water was available, I plunged my cotton treasure into it, then placed it back on my head, leaving a small pool within to trickle cool relief down into my sun-glassed eyes.

By this point, we still had no solid plan for crossing the intimidating Kalahari.

Enter James McBride—a fresh-from-Ireland character we met at a local bar and casino. His Gaelic brogue was thick, his humor even thicker—keeping us doubled over in laughter about his homeland, his mother, and his pals back home.

When James—the slot-machine repairman—heard of our destination, he latched onto the idea like a rat on a Cheeto. Without hesitation, he offered to be our chauffeur, neatly uniformed for the occasion.

We might have imagined a sturdy, time-tested Land Rover for this desert crossing. Instead, his car was barely bigger than a breadbox.

Three grown men and gear for the wild—two men too many. Running alongside seemed an unwise alternative, so we poured ourselves in, knees to chins.

We waited for midnight, then—with a full tank of gas—roared off into the star-filled African night.

I tingled with excitement. Chris slept like a stone. The third McBride—the “real McBride,” fresh from the old sod—had the wheel.

His foot was lead-heavy on the pedal, pushing us across barren wastes before dawn.

Several hours in, Chris and I were jolted awake by a bone-crunching impact—a zebra, flying into our right-side door at terrific speed.

Chris muttered something about a leopard stampeding the herd.

The collision sent us skidding to a dusty halt. The door never opened again.

No brass band welcomed our early-morning arrival in Maun, beside the usually dry Thamalakane riverbed.

The Duck Inn was closed—so much for a scotch-and-water reward after the trauma of that desert crossing.

Waiting ahead lay the Boro N’yane River, flowing from the Okavango Delta.

It would be our gateway into the wet/dry wilderness—and as far as we knew, no one had ever done what we planned to do by mokoro.

We woke our Doctors Without Borders friend in Maun, rolling out our sleeping mats on his floor—not at all troubled by the cobra curled in the cold ashes of the fireplace. Or rather, we hoped it was sleeping. The flick of its tongue, sampling the air, suggested otherwise.

Yes, fireplace; yes, nights can be surprisingly cool in the Kalahari. And, yes, I was less than pleased with such an evil-eyed roommate.

Chris had graduated from Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg in 1965 with a degree in English and Zulu. Soon after, he ventured alone—guided only by his instincts and curiosity—into the depths of the Okavango, searching out what he described as the last of the San River Bushmen.

He found two traditional, Kiganima and Matturu, thought to have diverged from other humans one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand years ago—holding tight to traditions fading elsewhere.

Before leaving that first time, Chris loaned his double-barrel shotgun to a Swana friend, promising to return for it one day.

Now, here we were, returning and hoping and needing to recover the shotgun.

We found a guide, whom we nick-named “Gilly-Billy”, a Swana man whose real name defied our tongues—and hired him, along with his twenty-foot mokoro, a thin-hulled vessel hand-carved from the sausage tree (Kigelia Africana).

Before steel tools were available, locals shaped the boats by controlled burning, hollowing the tree’s core with fire.

Our mokoro was long, narrow, and impossibly streamlined, its bow and stern forming elegant points. Some of these handcrafted boats carried subtle, snake-like curves, depending on the tree’s natural bend and the skill of the builder.

The pole,balancing delicately upright,maneuvered with a long push-pole, its duckbill-shaped tip spreading as it pressed into the mud, then closing as the mokoro glided forward.

The art lies in finesse: push too hard, and retrieving the pole robs you of forward momentum. It is a rhythm,a conversation between force and surrender, yet another example of the opposites of the antipodes.

We launched into the world’s largest inland delta with precious few supplies; cornmeal, salt, oil, kudu biltong, and our greatest treasure: a pellet gun purchased in Maun for one hundred fifteen pula.With scant pula left—the Setswana word for “rain” and Botswana’s currency—we had gambled heavily on the gun.

A single lever stroke compressed enough air to send a tiny lead pellet fifty feet, enough to drop a green pigeon from the trees. We ate scores of them in the days ahead,each shot fired with careful restraint, not just for accuracy but for preserving our dwindling pellet supply.

Fishing hooks and twine allowed us to snare the ever-present catfish, though their taste was muddy and thick.

Ketlhatlogile Mosepele at the Botswana University writes of the nutritional richness of bream fish, which we found to be far more palatable.

Silver catfish(Lerehe in Setswana)—were easily caught, as were the three-spot tilapia, known locally as Mbweya.

With little money left, we sought to buy our own mokoro—a cheaper solution that would allow us to hire a guide independently.

We arrived at a tiny village on a too-small island, hoping to negotiate.

Following tradition, we were brought to the chief—a wiry man seated before his crude shelter. One of his wives appeared with bowls of fish stew.

The stew had more sharp bones than meat, but we slurped loudly, mimicking the chief’s own eating style, eager to show respect.

I tried not to stare at one of his wives, though my attempts were in vain.

She, like the other women, was stark naked save for a small leather modesty belt.

Her sign of relative wealth was far more memorable—a bright pink knitted jersey, worn to near ruin. Through well-worn holes, protruded two of the most pointed, erectile breasts the gods had ever shaped.

Had she been handed two balloons, she might well have clasped her hands behind her back and popped them both with a single stab.

The chief had two bowls before him—one for fish bones, one for eating.

From time to time, his young son emptied the bone bowl into his own, re-sucking the scraps that had already been consumed once before.

Such was the scarcity of food among these thin, wiry people.

That full-moon night, drums echoed across the delta.

Somewhere, the solitary crocodile specialist—the one we had met earlier—was out there, searching for hidden nests among the reeds.

In the distance, basso drumbeats reverberated, mimicking the heartbeat of Africa itself.

Freud would have smiled, I thought.

Through it all, Chris was quietly, profoundly joyous returning to the place that had captured his soul as a young man, after university.

I hiked daily with Horoletswe from Kiganima’s camp to the felled tree and wrote writing for hours as he hacked endlessly until his calloused, dry and deeply cracked hands bled.

Those familiar with this glorious place in Botswana hesitate to call it the Okavango Swamp, though in certain wet-season moments, the name might feel justified.

But for those of us who have been seduced by her gin-clear waters, her scrappy fish, her sweet-fruited marula trees, and her star-drenched nights, she qualifies as Eden itself—where one might, indeed, be tempted to lie down beside her still waters.

Yet the imagined lion and lamb do not lie together here.

For this place has spent the last ten million unglaciated years shaping itself into a state of flawless equilibrium, where the veil between prey and predator is as diaphanous as a silk scarf.

There is no wasted motion, no excess. Everything, everything, occupies a place that has been worked out since time out of mind.

Chris McBride—my old friend with the shared surname, if not shared genes—was nodding off, lulled by the breeze noodling along the slow-moving stream.

We had wandered into this remote, unknown place, calling to mind the old admonition:

Chris stirred, half-awake, wrapped in the languor of the Tropic of Capricorn, where man, lion, kudu, and impala alike call a ceasefire beneath the marula’s shade—escaping the blistering heat of a Capricorn sun.

Chris could explain those vocalizations in full.

Then, suddenly—his voice sharpened with urgency.

I couldn’t see it. But I was acutely aware of my situation and I froze.

Just be patient, I told myself.
Try to wait calmly.

And as I sat—stone still, not breathing more than necessary—my mind filled with the story of a young man who had died near Timbavati Dong-Dasha.

He had gone to the wood box for firewood, reached in, and—like a flash of fire—was bitten.

He was on his way to the clouds before his mind had even fully grasped the moment.

• First, loss of control—tongue and jaw heavy.
• Then, slurred speech. Blurred vision.
• Tunnel vision.
• Drowsiness. Paralysis.
• Nausea. Cough. Sweating. Dizziness.
• Hemorrhage.
• And a taste of death itself.

It can take seven to fifteen hours for a black mamba bite to kill a man.

According to National Geographic, venomous snakes kill an estimated thirty thousand people annually in sub-Saharan Africa—though experts believe the number could be much higher, as many deaths in rural areas go unreported.

Newsweek places the figure between twenty thousand and thirty-two thousand fatalities a year.

Staggering numbers.

Numbers that, in this moment, felt very personal.

Before this next adventure, back in Timbavati, Chris had played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—his favorite music on earth—through speakers mounted on the little Land Rover, letting the sound roll out across the bush.

It was part of his method—an attempt to habituate the lions to his presence.

He would provide an impala or another offering, hoping to draw the lions in for observation, then follow them as they hunted.

Through this persistent study, he documented their dependency on Cape buffalo, a reliance that had once been doubted.

The next day, Gilly-Billy poled us further up the Boro River, with Chief’s Island on our left.

He and Chris spoke of the dangers of crossing open water on a cloudy day—and of the serious threat posed by the hippos.

Territorial, furious, and unpredictable, hippos will overturn a mokoro without hesitation—killing all aboard.

My personal observation at T’sau l’gwana—pronounced with the click sounds of the Bushmen—was something I had never read in any report.

Deep in the Okavango, we poled past a place where there had once been a cluster of huts.

Like an echo of Karen Blixen’s words in Out of Africa:

Our guide, push-pole in hand, explained to Chris:
The head man had been killed by a hippo, right in front of his family.
In terror of the spirits, the people burned all they owned and abandoned their home.
We could still see the burnt earth, the twisted blackened metal trunk—likely their most precious possession, used to keep their food safe from hyenas.
They even left behind a beautiful stone adz.
I had not seen a single stone on our wide-ranging travels, and I could only assume this fine artifact had come from a great distance.
The name for the place, Carry My Child, spoke to the ever-present spirits of the land.
The story carried a warning—woven into the very fabric of life here:
A mother, needing to water her mealie-corn stalks, asks the zebra to carry her child while she is gone.
The zebra tires of the duty.
The hyena, sensing opportunity, offers to care for the child.
Then promptly devours it.
In Africa, hippos kill more people than any other animal, followed by crocodiles and then snakes.Hippos are estimated to kill around five hundred people annually—but fatalities are likely underreported, meaning the real number is far higher.
They are, without doubt, the world’s deadliest large land mammal—charging, capsizing boats, crushing human bodies with their immense, sharp-edged teeth.
We stuck to the narrow hip-wide trails, cut through the dense papyrus thickets by crocs and hippos themselves.
Overhead, only a tall giraffe might peer above the towering reeds.
Thus, we had no real sense of direction—no clear landmarks—in this search for Kiganima and Matturu.
Only the ancient waterways.
Only the unseen hands of fate, guiding forward.
Finding them days later, mm has (hard copy?) photos of the VE 24 next to their simple brush shelter.
At one point, unknowingly, we passed a small side channel, where a crocodile had parked itself for a midday nap.

The creature, disturbed and territorial, voiced its displeasure—a sound torn straight from a nightmare, rising from just a few feet away.
Crocodiles are the most vocal of reptiles, capable of bellows, growls, and hisses.
This ancient relic of Pangea, barely changed since the Triassic period, has been around for one hundred million years—perhaps its unchanging existence is the reason for its perpetual boredom and grumpiness.
Each year, hundreds of people are estimated to die from crocodile attacks in Africa—though, as with most fatal encounters, the true number is likely much higher.
Enough of that grim thought, I prayed, imagining a rosary in my fingers.
We pushed on, searching for solid ground—a small island, preferably one crowned by a strangler fig, where we could make camp.
By now, Chris had reclaimed his shotgun, and as we rounded a leafy little island, he quickly fired at a sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii)—a marsh-dwelling antelope, standing knee-deep in its usual habitat.
Wounded, it weakened, and we closed in.
From the bow of the mokoro, armed with a seven-inch Buck knife, I lunged—grabbing the animal’s left horn—and with a single, lucky stroke, stabbed between the atlas and axis vertebra at the base of its skull.
The kill was instant.
We butchered the animal, making camp on that tiny island, and ate from the hindquarters forward—consuming the most perishable cuts first, before the heat summoned maggots.
A twenty-four-hour smudge fire kept the remainder smoking into biltong jerky, preserving it for the long days ahead.
That full sitatunga belly, with the moon and stars above, sent me into a deep sleep.
Until I was awakened—thrown into a hideous nightmare.
Something—an insect, a parasite—was inside my ear, burrowing inward, searching for an exit through my brain.
For a time in college, I was a pre-med student, taking a course in parasitology.
You do not want to travel alone in Africa if you have taken such a class.
Panicked, I considered assisted suicide, hoping not to waste a shotgun shell.
Chris, unruffled, suggested a simpler remedy:
He placed a drop of vegetable oil into my ear.
The damned thing drowned.
Its remains, I assume, are still lodged somewhere—perhaps the reason my earwax carries an unpleasant scent.
Chris was unwell, his residential malaria reawakening, the blood parasites attacking again.
Even after treatment, malaria can persist for years—its Plasmodium species lying dormant in the liver, triggering relapses.
Its effects can be long-term, leading to neurological problems, cognitive impairment, motor dysfunction, even seizures.
As he slept, I decided—perhaps foolishly—to venture alone on a Chief’s Island hike, without Chris, and more critically, without his .416 rifle to protect me.
My mind buzzed with fears—but I chose to press forward, treating it as a test.
Upon returning, I described to Chris a sound I had heard—a hideous growl, something that nearly killed me from sheer fright.
I imitated the noise, trembling still.
Chris burst into laughter.
“That was an ostrich, Alaska man!”
Wandering alone, I stumbled upon something extraordinary:
Beneath a large marula tree, a giant wooden sculpture—a penis and testicles, crafted into a bellows for smelting iron.
I was instinctively afraid—the place felt like a sacrilege, a site where no white man should trespass.
Throughout history, forgers were high-ranking Sanusi mystics, their work filled with ritual and alchemy.
Near the ancient bellows, I found pieces of slag—stony waste matter, separated from liquid metals in the refining process.
Such heat requires fast-moving air, forced into the flames through a powerful bellows—one not easily crafted.
The Zulu forged at least twenty types of spears, the most famous being the assegai, used across Southern Africa—a throwing spear, its narrow leaf-shaped blade designed for flight and impact.
The bellows itself was astonishing—its shaft measuring three and a half feet long, roughly ten to twelve inches in circumference.
Carved from a single piece of wood, it was hollow, smooth inside and out.
At the base, two rounded testicles, their surfaces stretched loosely with animal hidperhaps porcupine, though I guessed impala.
At the tip, a small aperture—through which air was expelled into the fire, mimicking the act of creation itself.
By manipulating tension, the forge master could accelerate the air, deepening the flames, seeking the searing heat required for metalwork.
Across centuries, forgers and alchemists alike have searched for the Philosopher’s Stone—a substance to transmute lead into gold, to hold the secret to immortality.
In Western myth, Thor of Scandinavian legend wielded lightning to forge ancient swords.
His hammer, Mjollnir, represented thunder, the force of creation through fire.
Africa, too, has its sacred metallurgy.
And though the distance between Scandinavia and Timbavati is vast, the art of fire and metal—the act of forging transformation—remains universal.
I Remember
We hitchhiked out of Maun in a wheeled Cessna 206, lifting off into the African sky, leaving the delta behind.
At the Namibian border at Hanse, we faced uniformed guards, machine guns slung across their shoulders, their expressions unreadable.
We had no certainty of passage, but we had a fat bag of oranges—a bribe, or perhaps just a gesture of goodwill.
With jovial interaction, our passports were stamped, and we were sent on our way—flying at treetop level, because below us, the war raged on.
Bullets flew beneath us, and rumor had it that Cuba had sent twenty thousand mercenaries, engaged in the fight for control of the country.
Landing in Windhoek, we were reminded again of our precarious position.
We passed through scowling faces, camouflage uniforms, machine guns pointed at us.
We avoided eye contact, the way one does when passing a snarling pit bull—submissive, downward gaze, long, slow exhalations, moving forward without hesitation, without challenge.
Africa had left its mark on us.
The zebra, colliding with our car as it fled a lion’s pursuit.
The herd of impala, leaping over our sleeping-bag bodies, plunging into the Umfolozi River, where crocodiles waited, mouths open.
The live-trapped leopard, caught in a baboon cage in the dark.
The black mamba, poised behind my head, waiting.
The pygmy goose, drifting in the Du-O pool.
The parasite, burrowing into my ear, seeking my brain.
The sitatunga, killed with a Buck knife, eaten in its entirety.
The old man, dying fireside, struck by a night adder.
The mating adders, coiled in the dark, unseen until I had stepped over them.
Horuletsue, carving a mokoro.
Maturu, with her small band of river Bushmen, telling us that Kiganima was dead.
Carry My Child—T’sau-n’gwana, the burned-out camp, where the hippo had killed the man.
And so much more.
We had entered the Okavango Delta, and it had entered us.
Some places never leave you untouched.

Image Credits

Image: Black mamba taxonomy chart
Source: Wikipedia
By Hendrik van den Berg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47439580

Image: Deadly crocodile
Source: Pixabay
Image by Jean photosstock from Pixabay

1. National Park Service History Electronic Library & Archive May 1, 2012 [↩]
2. Blixon, Karen. Out of Africa, 1937. Putnam, Denmark. [↩]

Under the Bering Sea

by Michael McBride

IN A SCUBA DRY SUIT BENEATH THE BERING SEA, I worked to save a disabled king crabber as gale-force winds—approaching eighty knots—threatened to drive the vessel aground and take the crew with it.
The Lindblad Explorer, famed for its Antarctic expeditions, happened to be nearby. I was serving as Expedition Leader aboard her at the time of the incident.
Sharing the bridge with German Captain Verner Volkersdorfer, I navigated the renamed Explorer—based out of Seattle—carrying ninety-six passengers and thirty-four crew. We diverted course to pick up a passenger in Prince Rupert en route to Nome, with plans to visit the rarely seen Pribilof Islands.
These islands—little more than treeless, tundra-covered hills—are home to the Aleut communities of St. George and St. Paul, with populations of about one hundred eleven and four hundred, respectively. Despite their remoteness, the shorelines and cliffs teem with life, making them a haven for birders and wildlife enthusiasts. Often called the “Galápagos of the North,” these islands attract those drawn to rare wild abundance: whirlpools of seabirds, herds of marine mammals, and congregations of whales.
Some come seeking to notch “Galápagos” into their travel log, only to find themselves equally mesmerized in the middle of the Bering Sea. Go figure. Chill bumps, after all, have no fixed geography.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration attributes this biological bounty to enhanced tidal mixing—nutrient-rich slope waters rising into the euphotic zone. Copepods, crucial links between phytoplankton and predators, flourish here, feeding fish, seabirds, and whales in a food web of astonishing complexity.
The Pribilofs are the world’s largest Unangax̂ villages, where the languages spoken are St. George Unangam Tunuu and St. Paul Unangam Tanax̂ Amix̂. For English speakers, the bilabial pronunciations can be challenging.
Historically, the Unangax̂ traveled to the Pribilofs seasonally for hunting. But in 1786, when Russian fur trader Gavrill Pribylov arrived at St. George, the islands were uninhabited. That changed abruptly: for two years, the Russian-American Company enslaved and forcibly relocated Indigenous people from Siberia and the Aleutians to hunt fur seals. The descendants of those first captives still live there today.
Overhunting drove the fur seals to near-collapse, and the once-resilient Unangax̂ communities fell into poverty.

Now…

Now the islands are part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and are known for their exceptional birding and vast gatherings of northern fur seals.
Commercial fishing—particularly for halibut—and seasonal work in local fish processing plants make up the backbone of the modern economy. Subsistence practices also remain essential, carried out with vigor and ancestral knowledge.
Each summer, more than two and a half million seabirds representing over two hundred species fill the cliffs, tundra, wetlands, and beaches. Even more staggering: over one million northern fur seals return to these shores to breed and raise their young—the largest such gathering of marine mammals anywhere on Earth.
Viewing blinds dot the beaches, offering close glimpses not only of fur seals, but also of Steller sea lions, walruses, and sea otters—each part of the deep rhythm of life in these islands adrift between continents.
As we approached, we maintained contact with the St. Paul harbormaster via marine VHF radio, which can reach across the sea for about one hundred miles. Through sizzling static, he confirmed our estimated arrival time and asked whether we had a diver aboard.
He spoke slowly and clearly, informing us that a large Bering Sea crabber lay disabled with line in its wheel—adrift in shallow water on the island’s windward side—and that a deep low-pressure front was approaching from the northwest, with predicted winds nearing eighty miles per hour.
I reminded the captain that I was a certified open water dry suit diver and had my equipment stowed in the bosun’s locker. I trusted Pedro Megano, our bo’s’n, to serve as my tender for what would be a challenging and possibly dangerous rescue attempt.
A high-wind warning had already been issued for the Pribilofs: eighty-mile-per-hour gusts expected from the north-northwest. The crabber and her crew—five or six men—were in grave danger. There would be no hope of salvation unless a diver could remove the fouled line and free the vessel before the storm arrived.
The sea was not heavy as the Lindblad Explorer hovered upwind from the crabber, “hanging on the hook.” Still, even in moderate swells, the anchor and heavy chain groaned and protested—an unnerving sound as Pedro and I clambered aboard.
Our twelve-foot black Avon raft pitched wildly, rising and dropping with each swell. The transfer to the crabber—a leap of faith—was tenuous at best. We quite literally tumbled over the bulwarks after first heaving our dive tanks and gear aboard.
The crew understood too well that their lives depended on me freeing that line. A spotlight was trained on my position as I moved aft to assess the current. I was more than aware that an anti-cyclonic tidal flow encircles these islands—complex, dynamic, and far from forgiving.
The bow’s orientation could have been influenced by either wind or current. What I saw disturbed me deeply. The current appeared to be flowing at nearly five knots—enough to make me seriously consider abandoning the crabber to her fate.
I understood the basics: warmer, slightly fresher surface water mixes downward, while colder, more saline water rises—driven by strong tidal movement. Bottom configuration adds further variables, and I knew there was no feasible way to enter from the stern and work my way forward to the prop in my cumbersome gear.
My only choice was to enter from the bow and belay myself aft.
The crabber’s bow, curved steeply upward, loomed what felt like light-years above the waterline. I turned to the captain and asked—half-joking, fully serious—whether he had any duct tape.
His look said everything, but he obliged. In the wheelhouse, I applied a foot-long strip across the engine start button. If I was going under that boat and hanging on to the prop, there was no way I was becoming crab bait due to someone’s careless mistake.
Next, I lashed a lead line to one of the large orange bumper buoys tied to the rail and tossed it overboard. If I failed or was swept downstream, I hoped to catch the trailing line and save myself.
I was not at all sure I had the strength to perform the series of underwater gymnastics required to get from Point A (bow entry) to Point B (entangled prop). I tried to picture the transition—while wearing a heavy dive tank and sufficient lead weight to neutralize the suit’s buoyancy. It was more than a little complicated.
Another mantra whispered to me: Beware of the unseen and unknown in unfamiliar situations.
Whether piloting a bush plane, a vessel, or simply driving a car, my personal rule is, “If in doubt—don’t.” The yellow traffic light is a warning. The next one is red. And I had no interest in meeting red beneath a disabled crabber in the Bering Sea.
Two cold-water swimmers offered me lifelong wisdom in moments like this.
Diana Nyad—movie-famous and still a dear friend—taught me the vital importance of breath control during high-stress underwater conditions. I assisted her once during her swim from China Poot Bay to Homer in Kachemak Bay.
Then there’s Lewis Pugh—Alaska’s antipodal counterpart, swimming in defense of fragile ecosystems around the world. Dubbed the “Sir Edmund Hillary of ice-water swimming,” Lewis became the first to complete long-distance swims in every ocean on Earth. Way to go, Lewis. Keep swimming.
Calm, they had both told me, was the secret.
That might be easy to say, but it is an art—an art that demands practice. And there was no time for practice. The storm didn’t care.
Over the side I went.
Immediately, I was gripped by the sheer force of the current and horrified by the monstrous razor-edged barnacles encasing the hull. These weren’t like the ones I’d lived with on my salt-kissed doorstep. These were serrated sabers.
My thirty-five-hundred-dollar Viking dry suit had no warranty against shredding itself on crustaceans. One tear, and my dive—and the crabber’s last hope—was over.
I remembered another dive: cold water, wrench in hand, when my neck seal tore. “I can take forty-degree water,” I thought. “I’ll finish the job.”
Old Neptune had other plans. He whispered back in his briny tongue:
“No sirree, Mr. McBride. Get your skinny butt out of my ocean—now.”
I complied, shivering, tail between my fins.
Somehow, this time, I avoided tearing the suit.
Reaching the prop, I nearly gave up. There were fathoms of five-sixteenths-inch polyline fused tight around the shaft and bossings. Unless I had a miniature underwater chainsaw, I couldn’t see how I would clear it.
My freshly sharpened nine-inch dive knife suddenly felt like a toothpick defending against a grizzly bear.
Then came the whisper, perhaps from some inner ancestor: “Faint heart never won a fair maid.”
So I attacked—with full force, though I cursed my choice not to pack a serrated blade. A diver under stress consumes far more oxygen, and I was stressed. That, I promise you.

Where to begin?

Just holding on to the hull in that fierce current felt like all I could manage. To untangle the problem, I had to shift angles constantly—fore to aft, port to starboard—searching for a solution from every perspective. I thanked all the yoga classes I’d ever taken and the four years of discipline from my military school days as a Navy SEAL. In underwater difficulty, calmness and breath control are everything.
A fathom at a time. Then another. And another. What felt like three hours—though it was surely less—passed before I began to believe I might succeed.
Few divers have ever been more relieved to break the surface than I was when I hauled myself from the sea and was helped aboard by the skipper—whose name I never did catch.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, still breathless.
“I’d love a spool of your net-mending twine,” I said. “It’s useful in more ways than you might imagine.”
He handed it over. That was that.
The dive had broken a cardinal rule—never dive alone—but there was another time, equally treacherous, when my solo descent nearly cost me everything.
When I first envisioned the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, it never crossed my mind that the dream might try to kill me. Yet there I was, helping build the Marine Science Field Station near the wilderness lodge, with no easy way to bring students ashore from the main transport vessel. Captain Jack Montgomery of the Rainbow Connection ferried kids back and forth from town with the kind of skill that makes it look easy. I knew the site intimately—I had kept a floating sawmill there, anchored with massive logs as I cut the lumber for the Center.
I’d found a three-thousand-five-hundred-pound concrete cube—three feet by three feet by three feet—to use as an all-weather mooring for the student raft. Board member Boyd Walker and I had constructed the raft from logs, rigged with a pulley system and a long splice in the line so it ran freely—no knots to jam—as we ferried kids from the Rainbow to shore.
But one day, I had to move the anchor into deeper water. And once again, from the salty depths rose that old mantra: never dive alone.
My friend, state legislator Drew Scalzi—the man who championed the Seafarers Memorial on the Homer Spit—owned a handsome tender called the Anna Lane. She was anchored nearby in Peterson Bay. Sixty-two feet long with a crew of four, the Anna Lane could hold forty thousand pounds of halibut or sixty-five thousand pounds of salmon in refrigerated seawater.
The anchor sat at the base of a steep, forty-five-degree slope. Beneath a layer of gravel lay three feet of glacial mud—fine as flour. Disturb it, and a thick cloud rises, blotting out all visibility.
I asked the skipper to help me move the anchor.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be glad to.”
Despite our care, we fouled the line in the prop, rendering the boat dead in the water. The Anna Lane was under contract to a cannery, and if they called and we couldn’t respond, the skipper risked losing a valuable agreement.
Without hesitation, I pulled on my scuba gear and dove in.
I fought through the tangle, locked in a knotted battle with a mess of heavy lines, when something touched my flipper—something that shouldn’t have been there.
At first, I thought a seal was nosing me, curious.
But through the dense brown cloud, I saw it—the underwater cliff looming near. The Anna was drifting on the slow tide toward the rock face, and I—wedged between iron hull and stone wall—was about to be crushed like a water bug.
I struggled harder. The line gave.
Back aboard, trembling in the safety of the galley, a hot cup of coffee in hand, I made a quiet vow to myself: never again, not like that. Never dive alone.

Image Credits:

Polar expedition vessel image by Constantine – Own work, via Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.