Nothing lasts forever in Yellowstone.

On a rainy and cold day, I found myself in Yellowstone National Park. I sat across from a raging river as rain pummeled my face and camera gear. Across the river, in a sloping meadow crisscrossed with fallen timber, a sow grizzly dug into the softening soil with her two cubs of the year. The cubs watched their mother, mimicked her, then watched her again. Occasionally they’d stop digging and race up the hill into the safety of thick new-growth lodgepole pine. They seemed to be practicing for some unseen danger their mother had been preparing them for.

There in the cold Yellowstone rain, the sow grizzly and cubs repeated this: dig, race uphill, and dig some more. Occasionally the cubs would engage in a bout of wrestling, tumbling with each other down to the riverbank, then racing back up. Their tiny bear yips and growls rose above the steady voice of the river as the day progressed and the rain came yet more.

I felt no fear. The river was a wide and boulder strewn torrent, creating a safety buffer for the bear family and myself.

Around me, lodge pole pine branches drooped from rain saturation. My camera lens was completely soaked, and I wondered how long the weather sealing would hold out.

Yet I remained, taking hundreds of photos and videos of this charming, wild bear family deep in the heart of Yellowstone National Park.

The bears paid me no mind for the most part. Survival was on their mind, an insatiable need to fill their stomachs. Every hour, a bald eagle soared above the river, its wing angles matching the course of the river itself. The Yellowstone woods loomed large, with the smell of sulfur in their air and the forest rising to cut-rock cliffs. This was their home. Their sanctuary. And it seemed as if the sow couldn’t have picked a better spot to raise two cubs.

After a couple hours I realized I’d had more than enough images and videos, and that it was time to leave the bears as I found them: just the woods, the river, and themselves. Alone.

I left the scene feeling honored. They’d let me be amongst them in that cold rain and wind, as they attempted to upturn that entire meadow.

A week later, a wildlife enthusiast friend of mine messaged me saying the tiny bear cubs I’d filmed on that beautiful day were dead. A boar grizzly had attacked and killed them as the sow grizzly watched helplessly.

My heart sank. I poured over my photos and videos on my laptop. How could something so tiny and beautiful live such a short life? How could the poor sow grizzly deal with such a loss?

The hillside and meadow, on that rainy Yellowstone day felt alive because of those cubs. 

And now I picture it in my mind, the sow by herself in the falling rain as the river tumbles past, those saturated pine branches hanging low.

But as I comb over my photos and videos, I realize something: the cubs are not truly dead. They live on in spirit in the great Yellowstone woods. And they live on in spectacular videos and images that will be seen by millions of people.

And then I realize I don’t care if anyone sees the images and videos. And I wish I could go back to that rainy day. I’d tell them to flee, to find a new meadow. I’d tell them that mother nature has bad plans for them. That not everything is a happy ending. Just a fool across the river trying to change the course of history.

Rest easy, little ones. You got dealt a sour hand. And saying “it’s nature’s way” is a hollow platitude. What happened was just bullshit.

You deserved better.