Deep Thought

I found this bear sitting in the tall grass with both paws raised to its face - scratching, or perhaps just thinking something through. We had come off the river for the afternoon, moving through the open ground above the grizzly mazes, when I spotted it: this enormous animal settled into the grass with both paws raised near its chin and forehead, eyes half-closed, the autumn foliage bright behind it. The posture was so completely human that I had to look twice to confirm what I was seeing.

Bears scratch because they itch, of course, not because they're pondering life's larger questions. But the posture in this image borrows so completely from the visual vocabulary of human contemplation - the raised hands, the slightly bowed head, the apparent absorption in something inward - that it is impossible to look at it without projecting something onto the expression. What is the bear thinking? The bear is probably not thinking anything in particular. But the image suggests otherwise.

Deep Thought is the most lighthearted image in this collection, and one of my favorites. Wildlife photography tends toward drama and power, toward the action and the chase, and there is plenty of that here. But every collection needs a moment of pause, a piece that makes you smile before it makes you think. This is that piece. It holds its own on any wall, and reliably produces the same response in everyone who stops in front of it.