For my post-Covid body, it was quite an ascent. Two and a half thousand vertical feet, over stumps and logs, through brush and bush, and detouring around endless blowdown. On my back was a punishingly heavy pack stuffed with tent, sleeping bag, food, clothing and an assortment...
I'm not going to pretend it's been a grand few months. After the devastating loss of Kristin in February, only a month after she was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, I returned to Canada and the lodge alone to find it had been one of the snowiest...
I have some very sad news to share. In the early hours of yesterday morning my dear, darling wife Kristin, with whom I built up Wild Bear Lodge and have run it for the last fifteen years, died from cancer. I was with her. She had...
It was a former guest who helped me join the dots. For a couple of years now I have been thinking about the therapeutic value of what we offer at the ranch: high alpine hikes, rainforest walks, encounters with bears and other wild...
We should probably have done it years ago. We had only been here a few months - which makes it nearly 14 years ago now - when an Austrian family arrived in our yard. The father leaped out of his car, disgorged two noisy youngsters from the...
It was the cows what nearly did me in. I stood there staring intently at the imprint of a large fat hoof in the dirt. Definitely too big for a deer. Not quite right for an elk. But what else could it be? It didn't look good...
There are days when the Bear Gods frown upon us. The bears are always one step ahead of us, their favourite feeding zones are disappointingly deserted, and the guests and guides return from a day out bear-spotting empty-handed and just a little glum. And then there are...
It was more than twenty years ago and I was standing near an impromptu checkpoint in northern Albania as the country erupted in chaos and anarchy around me. A few yards away was Ant, a fellow journalist and veteran war reporter I was working with...
I'd never even heard of a snow-blower before I moved to Canada. A strange-looking beast, it has a large hungry mouth with a plethora of curved metal scoops inside, and a small chute that dispenses the white stuff high into the air and at an angle. The...
There's something about a wood fire. Perhaps it's the crackle and spit of the logs as they begin to take. The awesome fury of the main burn. The orange glow of the embers as the chemistry of the fire takes its course. Or maybe it's the pleasing...