Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness

You are not like Doug Peacock unless you’ve unwrapped a grizzly skull from your spare wool sweater and placed it next you facing a fire. You are not of his brethren unless you have raged against Man’s explosively intolerable treatment of animals or have had religion choked out of you by scenes of killed children. And you and he are psychologically askew unless you can avow, and mean it, that if you run into serious trouble you do not want to be rescued, preferring that your carcass provide feed to a community of bears.

Doug Peacock, after serving in Vietnam as a Green Beret combat medic, returned to the U.S. with a desire to be in wild places. He’d winter in desert lands then head to the backcountry of Yellowstone and Glacier Parks show more on quests to feed his soul with the company of grizzlies at breathlessly close range. For him, as for the Blackfeet tribe, the Grizzly has been the Medicine Bear. He is a man to whom “bear bells” are an obscenity.

Not surprisingly, he’s learned quite a bit about safe conduct around the animals and offers a store of advice on how to improve not only your chances of survival but also the chances you will see them without becoming an intrusion. Of course, part of being human is making mistakes, and Doug, he’s made a few. Safety is not guaranteed. For his readers this is high entertainment: close encounters of the pissed-off ursine kind.

One of Peacock’s conclusions in his memoir, Grizzly Years, is that if “grizzlies are to survive in the modern world, the bedrock assumption must be that these animals, grizzlies, have the right to live a bearish life.” That assumption, he warns, has risks: “Grizzlies will always be dangerous. It is within the range of the ‘natural behavior’ of any grizzly to kill a human during his or her average life span.” He accepts that. Many will not. They are not like Doug Peacock. Let us give thanks that he is. show less

This was a thoroughly enjoyable book combining Peacock's decades long study and filming of grizzlies in their natural habitats with his personal journey of healing and self-understanding - - a have to read that brought greater understanding of our (Annette's and my) encounter with a grizzly while hiking in Glacier National Park in Montana. Learn more about the author in an July/August 2002 article, Q&A Grizzlies http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0007/q_n_a.html by T. Chamberlain, from National Geographic Adventure. Note that journalist, author Andrea and Doug Peacock are married. (lj)

Convincing tour of recovery from Vietnam through the balms of the U.S.'s wildest places and beasts. Just enough personal to fully engage. Hints of his expertise as a naturalist and paleontologist. My book was a lousy copy printed POD. Is there another full life memoir in the man?

Convincing tour of recovery from Vietnam through the balms of the U.S.'s wildest places and beasts. Just enough personal to fully engage. Hints of his expertise as a naturalist and paleontologist. My book was a lousy copy printed POD. Is there another full life memoir in the man?

This book was recommended by my memoir teacher as an example of using flashbacks. Doug Peacock writing is so visual, I loved it. The story itself is not of my preference so I focused on specific sections of the story. I will be sending the book to my brother who loves the wilderness and he also came home from Vietnam.

Doug, thanks for writing this story.

It is very easy to tell why Edward Abbey (one of my literary heroes) liked this guy. Terrific book.

El autor de este libro es una leyenda viva: un híbrido perfecto entre Henry David Thoreau y John Rambo. No exageramos: Doug Peacock es un magnífico naturalista, pero también fue Boina Verde en Vietnam. Y a su regreso, como a tantos veteranos, le fue imposible reinsertarse cabalmente en la sociedad civil. Entonces inició un vertiginoso viaje de huida de los hombres y de acercamiento a lo más salvaje que encontró: los osos grizzly. Sólo entre estos animales, los mayores depredadores del continente americano, era capaz de sentirse vivo. Este libro es el apasionante relato de sus años junto a los grizzlies en los lugares más remotos de Estados Unidos. Años en los que fue dejando atrás el alcohol, las armas y las terroríficas show more pesadillas sobre la guerra para convertirse en una referencia del activismo ecologista y en uno de los hombres que más sabe de osos en el mundo. Al fin y al cabo, nadie ha convivido tanto tiempo con estos animales, siempre en soledad, con el máximo respeto y una curiosidad inagotable. Y, por lo tanto, nadie ha narrado tan bien como Peacock la belleza y el riesgo absolutos de esa vida compartida en plena naturaleza salvaje. show less