The Living Edens: Tales of Denali

We stripped off our packs and started scaling the trees nearest to each of us. Pete was lucky, as he happened to be close to a stout spruce that afforded a relatively safe perch. I, on the other hand, was standing next to a tree with proportions like the cheerful evergreens that can be found in the lobbies of small banks around Christmas. Seconds later, I was swaying gently at the top of the spindly tree, hands and legs wrapped around a trunk that was no bigger than the handle end of a baseball bat. I really wasn't very high off the ground, a dimension that was made clear when the bear nosed his way over to within a few yards of the tree, and as if to get a better look, reared up on his hind feet. My shoelaces would easily be within his reach if he so much as stretched up and jumped a little, which really was a moot point, since, had the bear leaned up into the tree after me, it would probably have knocked the flimsy thing down anyway.

I spent the next couple of minutes yelling in a no-nonsense tone that if that bear didn't immediately take a hike, my friend Pete was going to climb down out of the great big tree

he was in and make a rug out of the bear's mangy hide. Finally, the bear let out a contemptuous snort, (or was that Pete?), and walked away.

But while bears may be the most dangerous animal in Denali, they are not necessarily the ones that cause the most aggravation. Mosquitos rank at the top of that list, as Neil Rettig and Bob Landis can both attest. Both of these accomplished cameramen spent long days in mid-summer surrounded by swarms of the pesky blood-suckers, but their efforts were well worth the sacrifice. Neil produced some great footage of ground squirrels, beaver and moose, and Bob shot wonderful sequences of bears mating, foxes hunting and a mother moose caring for her young calf.

Steve Downer, a cameraman who specializes in macro photography, made the supreme sacrifice by deliberately letting mosquitos suck his own blood while he filmed them for extreme close ups of their rather disgusting eating habits. The resulting footage will make your skin crawl.