Standing Ovation

The bear rose up on its hind legs in the tall grass and just stood there - not in alarm, not in threat display, just standing, the way bears sometimes do when they want a better view of something or simply feel like being upright for a moment. We had been moving through the open ground above the river that afternoon, one of the days we spent on foot working the rivers and the grizzly mazes, when this bear simply stood up in front of us - unconcerned, unhurried, choosing to be vertical in its own landscape. Against the bright green of the Alaskan summer foliage, in full afternoon sun, the posture was so completely at ease that it read as entirely voluntary. The bear was just choosing to stand.

Bears stand up for all kinds of reasons - to see over vegetation, to catch a scent, to assess something ahead. But there is a moment in the middle of the standing, when the bear is fully extended and relaxed and looking at the world from its full height, when the behavior stops looking functional and starts looking like something else. Something more like presence. Something that is simply the bear, standing in its world, tall as it wants to be.

Standing Ovation is a lighthearted image from a landscape that tends to produce serious ones - a bear in a moment of uncomplicated verticality, the grass below, the sky above, the whole summer happening around it. It brings to a room the particular energy of an Alaskan summer day: bright, warm, large, and altogether less grim than the season that follows it.