What to do if you’re attacked by a polar bear,
Blair Braverman grew up under the hot California sun, but her heart longed for icier climes. And so she followed it — to the far north, where she learned to mush sled dogs and face the challenges posed by the snowy isolation of a harsh landscape. In an ex
As a culmination of our winter training Tallak arranged a trip to Svalbard, the barren archipelago halfway between mainland Norway and the pole, where he knew of some sled dogs we could borrow. I could hardly believe my own life. Svalbard was legendary, sharp and ethereal, that particularly arctic combination of spectacular and austere; short of an expedition to the pole, I could go no farther north, no closer to the top of the world.
It was March. The sun there had not yet risen. For a few days we hung around the primary settlement, Longyearbyen, where fat reindeer shuffled down the main street. Then we rented some dogs and an armed guide, in case of polar bears, and set off into the interior.
That night, atop a glacier, we made an unusual camp: a cluster of tents, with the dogs staked in a ring around us. The dogs were not in a circle so they could fight off a bear. They were in a circle so that the bear, when it reached us, would already have a full stomach. I volunteered for the first watch shift, from 10 to 12, to get it over with. My headlamp was dim. It didn’t illuminate past the first row of dogs.
“How will I know if there’s a bear?” I asked the guide. “The dogs will know.” “And then?” “Wake me up. I’ll sleep with the gun.”
He stepped into the nearest tent, zipped it shut after him. All around, students in the other tents were closing down: flies zipping, lights switching off, the first snores filtering out into the night. I stomped my boots, kicked at the wind-packed snow, shook my hands to keep warm. Somewhere across camp was the other watch, but I couldn’t see her.
My headlamp flickered. It was too cold for the batteries. I switched it off and waited for my eyes to adjust. There were no stars, no northern lights, but the land was too white to ever be pitch black, no matter how dark it got. Instead, the snow, the mountains, the sky — everything was grey. I stood suspended in it. Gradu- ally I could make out the tents. The dogs were small mounds, curled in nests of snow.
Somewhere nearby, I thought, is a polar bear. Polar bears eat people. Eat them. Just when I thought I’d been getting used to things. Should we worry? my mother had asked me, after I first arrived at the school. I’d assured her that she shouldn’t. I loved her dearly, but her worry felt intrusive. Now she would worry about me. Now that I was facing challenges I wanted.
But I hadn’t said that. Instead, I’d made an appeal more hopeful than logical, pointing out the threats that were lessened here: Car crashes. Terrorism. The flu. The dangers here were different, I argued, but no worse than the dangers at home. It was simply an adjustment. I promised not to be stupid.
The truth was that when it came down to it, the land here seemed kind, and that kindness seemed to be the great secret of the Arctic, at least on the mainland. All its dangers distilled into one crisp feature: cold. And what was cold but a call to the moment? Cold couldn’t creep or consume, stalk or drown. It necessitated only insulation. The things that survival demanded — covering our bodies, keeping them separate from other bodies — were things that I already wanted to do. In extreme cold, nobody thought of any body but their own. Nobody would think about mine, wrapped in its layers upon layers.
Of course, there was the matter of keeping warm. But after months of winter, even cold was easily solved.
To live in cold, I had only to internalize its counterintuitive rules: When my body wanted to clench, I had to force it open. Swing my arms when I wanted to pull them in. Jump when I wanted to sit. Pee when I would rather stay clothed. Change into dry long underwear even when the air bit my bare limbs. Cold was the mind’s distraction and the body’s one demand.
Of course I was scared. But at least I was scared of dangers of my own choosing. At least there was joy that came with it.
I walked to the edge of the ring of dogs and stared into the grey, searching for movement. I squinted into the dark. Are you safe? I’m as safe as I’ll ever be. And the dogs exploded. It happened all at once. The dogs were lying curled in their mounds and then they were shrieking, growling, screaming with an energy I had never heard before. I hit the side of my headlamp and shone the beam around the circle but all I could see was the dogs’ tense bodies and the snow that swirled around them. The guide, I thought. The gun. But my limbs felt weak. I kept sweeping my light around me. Dogs, dogs. And now the guide was beside me with his rifle high, shouting something I could barely make out — where were the dogs looking? And I realized, with horror, that they weren’t facing an approaching danger, something they’d scented on the wind. Whatever the dogs were barking at, it was already inside the circle.