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| Sunrise at the Russian Border, Finland |
A dark chocolate-coloured bear emerged from the forest and
plodded into the clearing in front of us.
He lingered briefly by a dead tree, the bark of which had been stripped
leaving it scarred with open wounds. The bear sniffed the air with his mouth
slightly open, his strong white teeth clearly visible as he ambled around the
long coarse grass until he picked up a scent. Facing us, he pushed his muzzle
into the ground and clawed at the land with a large powerful paw. Bones cracked loudly as he masticated his
find, crushing it with his puissant jaw.
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| Aules |
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| Early Morning Moose Safari |
Our day had started at 4am with a moose safari and a picturesque
sunrise over misty ethereal lakes. Haunting
eerie cries from a pair of cranes echoed across the fields like the screeches
of prehistoric creatures and drew our attention to a well camouflaged moose and
her calf. It felt like fireworks were
exploding inside me when we saw them; it was difficult to remain calm and still
but it was good practice for the challenge that lay ahead in the evening.
In the late afternoon, Sabrina, our French guide who spoke
English and Finnish with a Scandinavian accent, enlightened us to what life
would be like for 14 hours in a hide. We
sat in comfortable seats in a cosy lecture theatre and listened as she
instructed us on hide etiquette. There
was to be no talking, shoes were to be removed when we entered the hide and our
cameras had to be controlled to prevent them bleeping or flashing. Then she added; “Also, you can use a monopod
or a treepod but in front of your legs, you don’t have so much of the space.”
“So we have to avoid speaking,” she whispered, “and if we
have to discuss, we have to whisper. And
also we have to be careful of BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!” she shouted, demonstrating
what we’re likely to do when we saw a bear. And waking most of us up. So, we had been warned; no talking, no
beeping and very little space for 14 hours.
The hide was a wooden hut with nine soft chairs on noise-absorbing
carpet. A 20cm high panoramic window ran the length of the hide and below that,
a head-sized rectangular camera hole loosely covered with thick stretchy
canvas. Behind the seats were two sections with bunk beds and in another unlit windowless
compartment, which was darker than it ever got outside, was a compost toilet.
It was uncomfortably hot inside the hide and the group was
lively with some strong and humorous characters, who found whispering unachievable.
Our hide was on a small incline, largely concealed at the
front by ten metres of low lying shrubbery and bushes. Beyond that, a clearing with clumpy
straw-coloured grass, a few young fir trees, some saplings and cotton grasses all
of which made an excellent bear stage.
This arena stretched towards a small lake in the east, where six smaller
hides were situated.
At 10:15pm, the bear appeared and after an initial burst of euphoria,
the hide finally went silent. I could hear the beating wings of a pair of
ravens and the bear crunching on bones in the warm night air.
“His name is Aules,” Sabrina whispered. A healthy 15 year old male bear was standing
less than 20 metres from us, perturbed slightly by our presence in the hide but
as the light faded, Aules became a shadow and gained in confidence. He lolled
in the grass and pawed at fallen trees; we could even hear his heavy footsteps
as he strolled towards the lake and the other hides. He disappeared into the forest following no
obvious route but revisited the arena a few more times throughout the night.
It had been a long night and the next morning, as we walked
back through the forest, we met two girls from the lakeside hide closest to
ours. They greeted us with abundant excitement
screaming, “We saw four bears! four bears!”
“No!” Sabrina said soberly, “You saw one bear four time.”
Sabrina had been a guide for over 10 years and had spent more than 400 nights in a hide. At breakfast, as I gazed at the prize-winning images of the bears that had visited the hides over the years, I realized that for Sabrina who had watched them grow from cub to adult, last night was just another day at the office. But for us, all the emotions and excitement that we had to suppress in the hide were being released in waves of effervescence over orange juice and coffee. It was a priceless wildlife encounter - but I’d never want to spend another night in a hide.
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| Lake Erilampi at the Wild Bear Wilderness Lodge |
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