A 15-year-old girl is recovering now in an Anchorage hospital bed. Two nights ago, at 1:30 a.m. Sunday, she was beaten up by a bear in an Anchorage park while she was racing in a 24-hour bicycle marathon. Mind you, this is not a manicured city park. It is a large section of almost wilderness that spills off the western slope of the Chugach Mountains onto the Anchorage plain. It has a few parking lots at entry points and a number of dirt trails used by runners, hikers and bicyclists in summer and skiers and dog mushers in winter. Racers had been warned about bears and she reportedly had bear bells on her bike and had lights on both her helmet and her bicycle, but she and the bear collided at an unfortunate point in time and space. She suffered severe injuries and already has endured three surgeries. Her chewed up helmet may have saved her from even more serious damage. Maybe someday she'll get an endorsement deal from the manufacturer. One can always hope for a bright side.
What was disconcerting about the whole deal were the comments posted on the Anchorage Daily News web site after the initial story went up early Sunday only a couple of hours after the attack. http://www.adn.com/bearattacks/story/450061.html (the comments are at the end of the story)
Seems like every wacko in the state had something to say from condemning the race organizers for choosing a path along an active salmon stream in the dark, to gun control, to bears vs. people, to blasting every bear in sight of the city, criticizing or defending the guns the police carried to protect the paramedics who went in to get her, (I’m not a big fan of shotguns in this application either.), to blaming environmentalists for everything. A woman wrote from Memphis saying all the bears should be shot. One idiot even managed to drag in the right-to-life debate.
Quite a stretch for a little girl bleeding in the trail. Finally about an hour into this diatribe a woman wrote to shut up the couch-sitting gun toters to say what was important.... This girl was suffering in a hospital from the encounter, and let's think about her.
The fact is, all these writers look at a simple cause and there is no such thing in a disaster. Look at everything that contributed to Exxon Valdez or Hurricane Katrina. We live in Alaska and bears live in Alaska. We are bound to meet once in a while. In the not too far distant past, a posse would have hunted down that bear and killed it, if someone hadn’t gotten it even before the incident. Of course in those days, there weren’t many 24-hour bike races, either. But we have progressed and value our wildlife more these days. We also push the limits in their territory. It is almost the irresistible object meeting the immoveable force. In afterthought there are lots of “what-ifs.”
What if a huge oil company hadn’t donated the money to build a soccer stadium in the park where the race has been held in the past. The construction led to moving the race to the area where the girl was attacked.. What if the girl had decided to go to the mall with her friends instead. From the sound of her, though, that is unlikely. Reports indicate she had been skiing and bicycling almost since she could walk. As a matter of fact the first person to come upon her and begin the rescue was her former ski instructor.
It all raises a quandary that won’t be solved easily. We live in a state where we kill wolves and bears because they prey on moose, but when one lunches a human we defend the bear. Do we go in and shoot them all? More people have been molested by human beings on Anchorage bike trails than have ever been bothered by bears. Do we shoot those human beings, too? Do we start airborne hunting of cars and trucks and trains because they kill so many moose?
From all the reports that girl in the hospital was aware of the dangers, though she probably, like all of us, never thought it could happen to her. But we certainly shouldn’t be blaming her for what happened any more than we should be blaming the bear for doing what comes naturally.
Mostly, hope the girl comes out of it all right, although this is most likely a serious life-changing event. Let’s hope she recovers quickly with no long-term suffering, and can get herself back up on her bicycle soon. From everything written about her so far, it seems that is what she would like to do most.
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