At the end of each of those first few summers, Treadwell returned to Malibu. He and Jewel Palovak, his friend and co-author, put serious time into discussing how they might turn his burgeoning passion for bears into something more. Treadwell sold photos at crafts fairs, and he began doing free presentations for elementary school students.
He loved the children as much as they loved him. With his own kidlike enthusiasm, jumping up and down and having the kids repeat bear facts after him, he was a natural. What's more, the youngsters were learning about bears, and coming to care about them too. Thus the idea of Grizzly People was born： a grass-roots, nonprofit organization with a professionally designed website, dedicated to protecting the bears, studying them and educating people. Palovak claims that Treadwell reached about 10,000 schoolchildren a year. The letters from excited kids and grateful, impressed teachers poured in.
Not everyone approved of what he was doing. Regulations for Katmai stipulate viewing distances of no less than 50 yards for brown bears. Both Treadwell's personal videos and professional productions featuring him document distances far closer than that, which angered and alarmed conservationists. Several local people resented this surfer boy with wraparound shades telling them what to do with their bears. As to his claims that the bears were endangered, not even the most greenie locals would go along with such an idea.
The bear science establishment disdained his methods； one researcher described Treadwell's interaction with bears in the field as “his own private 'Jackass' show,” a reference to the sophomoric MTV program that features a series of mindless, often death-defying stunts. Longtime state bear biologist Sterling Miller recalls admonishing Treadwell to be more cautious. Treadwell wrote back saying that he would personally “be honored” to end up as grizzly scat —— though that was not exactly the word he used. Says Miller, “Given his attitude, I believed it wouldn't be long before he was so honored.”
Tom Walters, the plain-spoken head of bear-viewing guides at Katmai Wilderness Lodge, of which he is also a part owner, says, “I told him straight out, years ago, he was going to get himself killed.”
Strange Season Amie Huguenard saw Timothy Treadwell in Boulder, Colorado, at a slide show and lecture he gave in 1996 at the University of Colorado campus. She was smitten by his passion and commitment, and later wrote to him. One thing led to another, and they became romantically involved. At the time of their first meeting she was in her early 30s, a surgical physician's assistant, attractive in a wholesome, fit way.
She had spent a couple of weeks with Treadwell in Alaska in the two summers before 2003. This year's visit was different； there was an evident strain. For one thing, this late in the season —— the end of September —— it was a challenge to keep warm and dry while camping in the autumn rains with the first snows around the corner. Then there were the bears. Treadwell's camp, a short distance from the shore of Upper Kaflia Lake, was on a grass-crowned knoll amid a labyrinth of tunneled trails that bears had worn through the dense brush over centuries. Treadwell called this place the Grizzly Maze. Huguenard's anxiety at being there showed on a video that Treadwell shot； in one sequence, she sits in the brush with a female bear and cubs ten feet away. Then one bear shifts even closer. Huguenard's face is taut and unsmiling. She wanted to pull back, not push to get so close. She was frightened. They argued. Treadwell tried to reassure her. You can practically hear him saying, “Everything's fine. It's only Tabitha.”
But in fact, everything wasn't fine. Five miles away as the crow flies, bear biologist Matthias Breiter was camped out with a small party of photographers. The bear dynamics he observed were both chaotic and unusual. In a normal year, the half-mile of creek before him might have had 15 bears working for fish； this year, more than 60 showed up. The crowding led to conflict. “You'd usually see four fights a week,” says Breiter. “It was ten a day. Real, all-out fights. The level of aggression was far above normal.”
