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Kerrie Porteous travelled on our 'Sweden's Bears' holiday and submitted this entry to our writing competition.
Brown Bear by Kerrie Porteous
After a week of co-leading Naturetrek’s ‘Sweden’s Upland Birds’ tour this May, I thought I’d take the opportunity to visit a couple of the other lodges that we’ve been sending Naturetrek clients to over the years. For my final night in Sweden, I visited our friends Håkan and Eva at their Bear Lodge, set deep in the Swedish forests around three hours’ drive north of Stockholm. My husband, Sam, is very tolerant of my jetting off to watch wildlife without him (and, in reality, the idea of a week of birding dawn till dusk fills him with horror). However, having just missed our first wedding anniversary doing just that, I thought on this occasion it might be a good move if I took him with me. It’s fair to say that birds are not really his thing (‘Right, so is that a Wagtail then?’ ‘No, Sam, that would be a Magpie’. ‘Oh.’), but anything BIG is a different matter entirely (we both agree that one of the highlights of our honeymoon was watching a Manta Ray swim over us, 20 metres under the sea). So, it was with a good deal of excitement that we set off on this latest adventure together!
We arrived at the Bear Lodge at lunchtime, and were met by the welcoming committee (Chessie the dog) as well as our wonderful hosts, and sat in the warm sunshine to hear all about plans for the evening. Håkan and Eva have been taking would-be Bear-watchers up to their hide for about 8 years, and their passion for these marvellous creatures is clear from the moment you meet them. You really feel like you are deep in Bear country, away from the world, surrounded by forest, and when Chessie the dog decides to teach the Goosanders on the lake a lesson, her barks echo all around. As an eco-lodge, this place is exemplary. They generate their own power with solar panels and a small wind turbine; the lodge, lit by candles and a roaring fire, is homely and welcoming. We embraced the spirit and shunned a shower in favour of freshening up with a swim in the lake - I took a running jump from jetty expecting glacial temperatures, and was pleasantly surprised! (Eva later commented that she ‘hadn’t even heard a scream’ - a proud moment.)
After a late lunch, Håkan, Sam and I drove a few minutes up the road to where we would begin our short walk to the Bear hide. Along the way, Håkan showed us Wolf droppings (sightings are rare, but on the increase, and Håkan now thinks that their lodge is in the heart of the territory of the largest Wolf pack in Sweden), and trees where the Bears had been rubbing their backs and scratching the bark. We arrived at the hide at about 5pm, and Sam and I settled down in our comfy chairs and set about working out how to turn the flash off on our camera (who’d have thought that there is actually a ‘through glass’ mode that does it all for you! Brilliant!). We’d been warned that early June is not a great time for seeing the Bears as they will be mating, and certainly not to expect them to turn up straight away. So, we arrived at the hide having decided that we would just enjoy the experience, and seeing a Bear would be a bonus. It’s hard though, once you are at there in such an atmospheric setting, not get excited about the possibility of a Bear arriving in the clearing outside!
We had expected time to crawl, but as we chatted with Håkan about the Bears, Wolves, and all things wild, and watched him wage a one-man war on the Woodpigeons that were busily eating all the oats that he’d put out as a treat for the Bears (the pigeons won, and the oats were soon gone), before we knew, it was 8.30 in the evening. Håkan had set up a camera trap the day before which had shown a Bear arrive in the clearing outside the hide at this time; it was now time to take things seriously. It doesn’t really get dark here in midsummer, but the sky was nonetheless beginning to darken; clouds were rolling in, and there were rumblings of thunder in the distance. Sam and I began to panic … would rain deter the Bears, we asked? Håkan thought it would ... if it started ‘raining cats and dogs’ ... which it did. Things were not looking good. It was raining, it was gone 9pm, and not a sniff of a Bear. But, I like to remain positive in these circumstances, and sure enough the rain did stop, the clouds did clear and the sky brightened. I recall commenting that ‘the Bears will give it 5 minutes now that the rain has stopped, and then they’ll be here’. (I, of course, had no basis whatsoever for this confident assertion.)
Unbelievably, 5 minutes later, it was Håkan that said, ‘Quick, Bear, to the left.’ Sure enough, there it was! As if from nowhere, this huge, weighty Brown Bear had just appeared in the clearing, moving quickly. Håkan told us that she must be a female, and - no doubt - a male hot on her trail. And there was! The male was just moments behind. For the next half an hour we delighted in watching the two Bears move about the clearing. We whispered excitedly to each other from within the hide. The female was relaxed, and pottered around to our left. The male, on the other hand, looked rather stressed, clearly having the classic internal struggle of ‘to eat or to mate???’ Håkan had earlier put out a ‘picnic basket’ of fruit - designed so that the clever jays and persistent pigeons couldn’t get to it - but a big hungry Bear could. The male managed to find his way into the fruit, and ate as fast as he could, keeping his eye on the female at all times so that she wouldn’t leave without him! After about half an hour the two Bears moved off, returned for a few moments, and then left us for good. Håkan thought that there was a good chance a second male would be following the female too, so we resumed the waiting game. Just as we were starting to feel sleepy, sure enough, a second male appeared. This one was even bigger than the previous one, and as it began to get dark, we just sat and enjoyed watching him for the next moments. He mooched around, finished up the fruit, and eventually disappeared back into the forest.
We retired to the comfy bunks in the back of the hide at around midnight, and slept solidly until 7.30 the next morning! Arriving back at the Bear Lodge at around 9am, breakfast was ready and waiting. All incredibly civilised, we thought. As we waved goodbye to Håkan and Eva (and Chessie the dog) later that morning, Sam and I agreed that visiting Sweden’s Bears was surely one of the most magical, exciting and atmospheric wildlife encounters we’d had. There is something about the forest, the beauty of the clearing in front of the hide, the sense of hope and anticipation (a Bear sighting cannot of course be guaranteed, but with an average hit rate of 80%, staying for a couple of nights gives you a pretty high chance) and, more than anything, the realisation that these huge animals are just inside the forest, just there, that they could be walking past, just metres away - that needs to be seen to be believed. Sam informed me that it had definitely made up for me missing our wedding anniversary. Phew.
Read more about our 'Sweden's Bears' holiday.