Pictured: The Twenty-Ninth Day: Surviving a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra in a canoe full of gear
It’s been 15 years since I was attacked by the grizzly bear on Princess Mary Lake — 15 years since I was so sure that I was about to die, and so mad, so sad about what was happening.
Since then, I’ve tried to make the most of the extra time I’ve been given. It didn’t take long for me to feel like surviving indicated that I’d been spared for some purpose. To this day, though, I’ve yet to divine what that purpose is. And so, I keep working toward good, an admittedly nebulous idea, by trying to be the best version of myself. I don’t think I always succeed. Hell, I know I don’t always succeed, but doing the best I can is all I can do.
Each year, I commemorate the passing of the anniversary of the attack on July 31st — I call it Bear Day — by remembering. I work to channel my thoughts back to that hilltop, to find those memories and play them back as vividly as I can. This might seem an odd exercise, a sort of meditational masochism, but to me, it’s crucial that these memories remain true and remain raw.
I don’t want to forget what happened. To forget, at least to me, is not a sort of healing. For me, healing, and growing, comes from understanding. I’ve spent the better part of the past fifteen years working to understand what happened, and what it has meant for me. At first, I sat around for years, waiting for some epiphany as to why this happened to me. I could piece together the events that brought me to that hilltop, and how the bear responded to me and my actions. But I’ve always felt there was something more, that this incident solidified my sense of purpose in life. Without a definition of what that purpose was, though, there have been times when I’ve felt adrift, at the whim of currents and wind.
Early on, I knew one of the things I had to do was to tell my story. I took the early steps to preserve my memories by transcribing my journal and writing down everything that came to me. Still, I waited for all that energy of my collected memories to coalesce into one single kernel of enlightenment that would tell me why. But after years of waiting, years of fostering more understanding, it still hadn’t come.
Then, several years ago, I did have an epiphany. I suddenly had that “a-ha!” moment, though it wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d been waiting to have it all wrapped up and tied with a bow, a neat causality that said “that happened, so that you could do this.”
What happened instead was much less dramatic, yet no less empowering. I suddenly realized that I could spend my entire life, all this extra time that I’ve been blessed with, waiting to figure out the meaning of what happened to me, but I still might never completely understand, never figure out why it happened, and that purpose I’d been spared for. I learned you don’t always figure everything out. And that’s ok. The solution, the epiphany, or the light bulb moment isn’t necessarily as important as the process of working toward that discovery and the simple act of exploration itself might reveal more than could ever be contained in one blissful achievement.
With this realization, I knew it was time for me to write the book.
So, on this 15th anniversary of Bear Day, I’m choosing to go back to that hilltop, to channel those raw memories and live it all again as much as I can. It’ll remind me of that deepest despair, and that overwhelming urge to live. It’ll remind me of the immense joy and privilege I’ve had in 15 more years. And then I’ll kiss my wife, and hug my son tight, because that’s what matters most. And for a time, I never thought I’d be here.
