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NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY

Maybe part of the story of Stephen Haas and Janey Craighead, or at least my reading of it, began on a summer night, August 13, 1967, in Glacier National Park, Montana, four years before I was born.

On that night, two nineteen-year-old campers, Julie Helgeson and Michelle Koons, sleeping ten miles apart from each other, were each attacked and killed by two different grizzly bears; and their stories would forever change the way many people thought about one of America’s last great predators.

MY FATHER USED to tell me quaint anecdotes about visiting Yellowstone Park and of feeding curious bears from the car or watching the beasts rummage through a garbage dump. Bears were treated as docile mascots and encounters with humans were not only allowed but even encouraged. Bears were harmless, slow-footed cartoon characters, fun to watch as they pawed through the Yellowstone garbage dumps or ripped into your neighbor’s cooler; they were the Park’s resident entertainment, Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo, postcard characters of an endangered species. They even fought forest fires.

Yellowstone and Glacier parks are two of the only protected areas in the lower forty-eight states where grizzly bears still exist, but there are no more garbage dump feeding-times to watch, no drive-up encounters with bears, and visitors are regularly reminded that bears are dangerous and unpredictable and that, because they’ve chosen to drive, park, hike, or camp in the bear’s home territory, they are assuming a certain amount of mortal risk.

That night in 1967 in the backcountry of Glacier, a grizzly stalked Julie Helgeson and her friends throughout the dark hours of the night, circling the camp, hunting them. They could hear it pacing, huffing and sniffing, and watching. They’d tried to keep it at bay with fire and a makeshift fort of logs, but the bear wouldn’t leave. They heard it stomping around the perimeter of their camp, waiting for an opportunity. All night long, they kept their vigil, hoping the bear would lose interest in them and leave. But the bear didn’t lose interest. The bear waited. And waited. And meanwhile, ten miles away, in the middle of Julie Helgeson’s long night, Michelle Koons was dragged from her tent and killed by a different grizzly bear; and as a result, this night would never die, would always burn in the popular imagination.

It was speculated afterward by some that the bears had been attracted to the women’s menstruation, as if grizzly bears were land-sharks, magnetically pulled to a single drop of blood; and while it is true that bears and other predators can smell blood from great distances, it was highly unlikely that this is what led those bears to kill that night. The story expanded, first in news reports of the attacks and then through a sensational and popular book by noted true-crime author Jack Olsen published two years after, titled Night of the Grizzlies, and later in subsequent documentaries and films that borrowed the title (or variations of it) and certain details of the events that night.

Most recently a 2010 documentary, titled Glacier Park’s Night of the Grizzlies, revisited the attacks and interviewed survivors and park rangers who’d been there, making connections between the events of that night and the fate of the grizzly bear in the American imagination. In a sense, everything changed that night. Perceptions changed and policies changed. The story inflated into a myth that persisted for decades, floating in the margins of other attack stories, lingering also perhaps as a reminder that sexism perpetuates everything, even animal attack narratives.

Hegelson and Koons were, in essence, “blamed” for their attacks. Or at least that seemed to be what the stories were saying; and I wondered, as I prepared to play Stephen Haas, if anyone would ask me a question about Janey, about whether she was menstruating and if I thought that might have attracted the bear.

Part of me wanted to bait them a little, make obscure references to Night of the Grizzly, and see if the cub reporters would bite. Part of me wanted to know who’d done their research and who hadn’t. If they had, they’d know about Night of the Grizzlies. They’d know that these were the first fatal attacks since the park had opened in 1910. And they’d know that since those attacks, Glacier National Park has been the site of other attacks, some of them fairly recent. They’d know that, statistically, your chances of encountering a grizzly bear in Glacier were perhaps greater than they were in any other National Park. They’d know you don’t go to Glacier without knowing the bears are out there.

Q: Mr. Haas, if you knew there were bears in Glacier Park and knew the history of attacks, why would you choose to go there?

Have you seen the beauty of Glacier? It’s a spiritual place, man. You should go. I mean, there are dangers everywhere.

Sure, but aren’t you increasing the probability that you might be attacked by a grizzly bear when you hike or backpack in Glacier National Park?

I suppose so. But you’re also increasing the probability that you will experience something amazing, something so far from what you know in everyday life. It can reorder the way you think. It changes you. I guess that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Again?

Sure. I mean, not like anytime soon. . . . Do you know, have they found the bear?