Meet Charlie Russell, the Man Who Talked to Bears – Adventure Journal

Charlie Russell was a naturalist specializing in close relationships with grizzly bears. Well, as close as the temperament and safety of the species allows, anyway. Russell grew up in Canada, the son of a naturalist who worked on a documentary about bears. The experience profoundly changed the way Russell viewed bears; When not seen as a threat, he believed, bears were perfectly cordial toward humans.

Russell was neither a naturalist nor a university-trained biologist. He simply lived around bears, let them be his teachers. He spent many years studying brown bears on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula with his partner, Maureen Enns. The two men lived in close proximity to the bears, learning their distinct personalities and coming to believe that in an area rich in poachers, the bears considered them harmless and coexisted peacefully.

He believed that bears were highly intelligent, able to discern threats, and were unfairly portrayed as aggressive, bloodthirsty forest monsters. His views have been influential among bear researchers and those who advocate for non-lethal relationships between bears and ranchers.

Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russellby Gay Bradshaw, was published by Rocky Mountain Books in 2020. It’s a delightful read, full of illuminating interactions between Russell and the bears, illuminating mainly by how they don’t exactly show friendship, but what bears look like when they are not looking at humans. like threats brandished with guns.

Russell died in 2018.

Below is an excerpt from the introduction, courtesy of Rocky Mountain Books.

***

The ring of stones lay like a diadem on the crown of a clearing. There were 24 stones. He thought they looked strange, alone, sitting in a circle. His nose rose involuntarily. Human, he smelled human. It wasn’t a good sign. Most things in humans have never come true. The stones did not seem dangerous; they didn’t seem to be hiding anything except, he hoped, clusters of succulent larvae. He looked up as a crow flew by.

A few minutes passed. He would try one, he decided. Moving towards the nearest stone, the bear folded the claws of his right hand underneath and turned it. Nothing happened. There was nothing under the stone either. He moved to the next stone in the circle – same thing, nothing. Again and again, and this time the underside of the turned stone revealed pale quiverings of larvae. A smile crossed his face. His tongue curled out and licked them. So, the bear thought with satisfaction, the strange ring of stones was worth it after all.

“I like to sleep outside – that way I can hear the grass growing. » This handful of words describes the essence of Charlie Russell, a man of calm and open love. It was a love that mothers possess: unconditional, full of warmth, fierce, and backed by strict, straightforward ethics. It’s no surprise that bears are his passion. He understood the importance of their heritage and their position in the larger realm of life. He admired them, their refined sense of place, their ethic of serenity and their commitment to stand their ground. Bears embodied his own thirst for honesty and fairness. “I am in search of the truth – that is the purpose of my life. People often accuse me of having to be right. I don’t know what’s wrong. When I was in the middle of Kamchatka on my plane or anywhere else alone, I must have been right. If I wasn’t right, I would be dead.

Talked like a bear. All living things depend on being right, knowing and acting on the truth. This truth is the frankness of the natural rules of reality. When reality is misjudged, there is always a consequence, sometimes minor, sometimes less. A grizzly bear trying to catch a large, fatty salmon may misjudge its balance, miss the fish, and suffer dowsing. A deer jumping over a drop to escape pursuit from a wolf may miscalculate the distance, stumble, fracture a leg, and die. Charlie lived this reality and followed the rules.

His insistence on being right had nothing to do with winning an argument. He took advantage of every opportunity, in actions and discussions, to understand the complex workings of reality. He was disturbed when elements of a conversation or situation did not fit. No matter how mundane, every detail was important and required investigation until the pieces fell into place. This is how nature works, he said. Things have to fit together inside and out – they have to make sense for everything to work properly.

Charlie gained this understanding through experience. He read and listened, but his main source of knowledge came first hand. Nothing was assumed until the facts were verified mentally and physically. “I have always learned things by doing. This is how I know what is real and what is not. I connect what I know to what I have experienced.

“Bear” was not a generalization floating in an abstract hypothetical world, but an individual he had encountered in the here and now of nature, in the flesh. “Bear” was a bear, a special bear with a special story that he had encountered in special circumstances. Getting to know this particular bear meant learning about the woods, water, and wildlife she lived with. It was no different from an aspen tree which is known by its limbs and leaves, but is nevertheless connected to the root complex from which it grows.

“When you want to get to know someone, you have to live in a place season after season, year after year. If you pay attention to what is happening, then you can begin to see how everything and everyone fits together. That’s how you build trust – by respecting someone enough to take the time and care to understand. It was this understanding that allowed Charlie to see what was invisible to others, such as who or what was present, even when it seemed absent.

Pick up a copy, here or here.

Words by Justin Housman. Russell wrote several books about his experiences with bears. Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of Kamchatka, written with Maureen Enns, is the easiest to find.

Photos courtesy of Rocky Mountain Books.