Tigers and Bears and….oh….my – Anchorage, Alaska – [07/09/2018]

I may not be the biggest fan of zoos, but I do value their educational possibilities. Moreover, most of the zoos in Alaska are primarily rescue operation – these are animals that have been injured or near death and cannot be released into the wild. So instead they serve as ambassadors to the rest of the world and its visitors (and I think we all qualify as visitors to this world, if we are truly honest with ourselves). And sometimes those lessons come in the most unexpected of ways…

Anchorage presented us with much more of the usual Alaskan weather than we had enjoyed in the last few ports. It was cloudy and threatening rain, but thankfully not too cold. Not shorts weather by any means, but not so cold that you felt like you needed a parka. Anchorage has a lot to offer, but most of it is a long way out of town, and neither one of us is exactly rolling in extra funds right now. I had been trying to tabulate whether or not I could afford a cab out to the zoo when I realized that there was probably a free shuttle from the visitor’s center. Thankfully I was right. Also, it turns out that the price of the tickets was negatable when compared to what was inside.

The Alaska zoo is a tiny place, at least it feels that way until you really start exploring it. In truth it’s much bigger than it looks. And while the habitats are small, they are well maintained and the animals are obviously very well cared for, and those that need huge enclosures have them. More on that later.

I can now officially say I’ve seen a polar bear (no I don’t have a pet one, contrary to popular belief about Canadians) – though only from a distance as we never did make our way around to the far side of that enclosure. And that was just the second exhibit (the first was harbour seals, which, while adorable, were not a new thing for me to see). Then there were falcons (they had a Peregrine ….swoon)…eagles (both bald and golden) and more forms of owls than I had really computed existed.  There foxes who sat and looked straight at my camera as if asking me whether or not I was getting their good side. And baby musk ox who managed to get themselves tangled up in their toys (I not quite sure how he got himself free, but he was disentangled by the time we got back to that exhibit). There were even Siberien Tigers, which I was quite pleased were far away and asleep. Beautiful animals, but I much prefer to respect them from a distance. Same with grizzly bears (yup, those were there too) and black bears. There was even a pair of coyotes, who were content to look at us sleepily until Amras managed to catch their attention and cause one of them to jerk up and look directly into my camera lense. I was not quite ready for that and the shot came out blurry, but definitely better than nothing.

But as amazing as all of those living breathing ambassodors of nature were – even the snow leopard – none of them were nearly as important to me as just one enclosure…and I didn’t even know where it was. I knew they were there of course…but I didn’t know where, and for some reason I hadn’t looked at the map. As it turned out, they were in an area I never even would have looked, far away from everything else, on the other side of an open gravelled courtyard where there were cardboard photo-cutouts for people to take pictures with. It was Amras who found them first..

Hey, there’s your buddy….

And I turned the corner and was face to muzzle with a grey wolf…

And I couldn’t stop crying. Those strange tears that come with absolutely no sound because they are born not of sorrow or joy, but of some kind of an emotion you can’t even properly put a name to…

I’ve never…never really seen one up close…

And those incredibly wise eyes just stared at me…and I just …stared back.

And then I heard it…deep, throbbing and eerie, and throwing chills down my spine and tears to the corners of my eyes: they started to howl.

That was when I realized it wasn’t just one wolf, it was a pack. A pack of siblings, rescued from a nearby den (probably orphaned) of five siblings, who roamed a huge enclosure near the back of the zoo.

And I just knelt down at the edge of the gravel path, and watched. And watched. And watched. I could have sat there, and watched them all day. I can’t even figure out quite how much time I lost.

The sign read that the wolf population in Alaska is stable, and as such, hunters and trappers “harvest” between 1,000 and 1500 per year. Harvest??? How could they use such a cold unforgiving word? Making these beautiful creatures sound like…like corn, or wheat or…coffee beans. These animals are in so many ways so much more intelligent than we are, they are complicated and cultural and have a social structure that we can barely even begin to understand. And they should not be “harvested”.

I have seen many things in my life, many incredible amazing things, but I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite so beautiful as that wolf’s eyes…just…looking at me.

I’m pretty sure I know what my first choice of how to spend my day will be, every single Anchorage from now on.