They called it paradise. The place to be. A mountain realm like no other.
A place where the spectacular Teton range rises six thousand feet above the valley floor, offering one of the most distinct and dramatic mountain fronts in the world.
Below the striking peaks, the mighty Snake River meanders through a sagebrush valley dotted with aspen and pine. And it is here that I once met a great grizzly bear.
She was known as Grizzly 399.
I’ve been filming in Grand Teton National Park and the Northern Rockies for twenty years. A few years ago, I had the honor of filming 399 when she had her quadruplets. It was the first trip I’d made to Grand Teton to specifically see the great bear.
And the last.
Why the last?
Because I saw what was happening. Could feel what was happening. I wanted to give the great bear space. I didn’t want to be chasing her around the park, waiting in my car with heated leather seats, hoping she’d cross the road, all the while hemming her in.
I knew what was happening. Full size commercials jets were flying overhead, landing at an international airport that should never even be there. Dropping off passengers to a growing town that wasn’t meant to be there. Driving to stores that should have never been built there.
For 28 years, Grizzly 399’s world shrunk all around her. Slowly, year by year she had to make adjustments to the sprawl and greed of Jackson Hole. To the sprawl and greed of the human race.
She did the best she could as we closed in. As we built more and more storage facilities and hotels and developed properties merely for vacation rentals, so we could stuff more cash in our pockets, ultimately sacrificing one of the most beautiful places the world has ever known in the process.
She raised her cubs in all this for decades. Navigated through it all, a steady ship in a stormy sea. Each wave just a little taller than the last.
And yet the people came. More full size commercial airliners roaring into an international airport that should never have been there. Dropping off people who wanted to “own a piece of the Tetons”.
But when you buy or develop a house next to a national park, you don’t capture a piece of that park.
You ruin it.
What had once been a wild valley slowly turned into the suburbs, and Grizzly 399 handled it all with aplomb. She didn’t have to. But she did.
More and more photographers swarmed to the Tetons to see her every year. More and more “investment properties” went up, causing more people to drive the roadways. More stores were built. More drones flew overhead. More airplanes roared in the sky.
Each year her world shrunk.
And this fall, it finally closed in on her.
That poor driver didn’t kill the great Grizzly 399.
We did.
You see, Grizzly 399 was not just a bear. She is a symbol of a truly wild animal trying to hang on in a changing world, a world that is all about “me me, I, I” and very little of “why?” or “what can I do to help?”.
This is a world where if the stores start to fade or look a little old, we build the *exact same* stores two miles down the road. And ten years later, we do it again. And again. Until that’s all there is.
It never stops. Our need to consume, to stuff our pockets. To turn prairie meadows into U-store it facilities. To pave over everything that is true and wild. To pave over what is real.
Grizzly 399 deserved better.
The single best way you and I can honor her amazing legacy is to look at what happened to Grand Teton. And not repeat it elsewhere. We can honor her legacy by protecting our national parks by not bringing sprawl to their doorsteps. We can honor her legacy by pulling back on our obsessive need to develop everything and finally showing some tact and humility , *the same way she did when dealing with us*.
You see, Grizzly 399 was so much more than a bear.
She is a lesson. And she is teaching us all, still. Always had been teaching us. Because that’s just what a great mother does.
Long live the legend of the great 399. And long live the incomparable Northern Rocky Mountains.
Best,
– Michael
