Tammy-Led Adventures

    I should probably start off by explaining what a Tammy-Led Adventure is: It's exactly what it sounds like. You go somewhere with Tammy, and whatever she suggests, you just go along with.  If she says "let's walk in the river" you walk in the river. If she says "let's bushwhack through the Jurassic Park Swamp" you lose your boots in the mud. If she says "let's go that way" and that way is clearly the most difficult route, you hike up your waders a little further and you go. It's madness, but any good adventure is.

    So who is Tammy? The official answer is she's Katmai's Bear Monitor. The unofficial answer is she's Tammy, Queen of the Bears. Tammy knows the bears at Katmai probably better than she knows her actual human coworkers. In fact, I'm fairly certain that while she can identify a bear at 100 yards, she struggles with which person I am when I'm more than 20 feet away. I get it. I'm neither as interesting nor as pretty as a bear. Way less fun to look at.  Plus I (hopefully) require less monitoring. 

    Tammy's very much like a bear herself: She thoroughly intimidates me, and yet I'm always excited to see her when she appears. Also, she makes a lot of weird noises, and I usually have no idea what she's doing or why, but I'm fascinated. Now that you've met Tammy, you can understand why when she asked if I wanted to go with her on my day off, I said yes automatically without even bothering to ask where we were going. 

    The only thing I asked is "what do I need to bring with me?" to which she responded "waders, water, and a whole lot of food. Like, a LOT of food." If she was planning to lead me out into the woods/river and leave me there, I'm grateful she at least was nice enough to warn me to bring snacks. Or maybe that was just bear bait. With Tammy, you never can tell. 

    She brought me up to Margot Falls, and then we plunged into the creek and started tromping down towards the mouth. 

    The current was strong, and the rocks incredibly slippery, and the river was so full of spawning salmon that it was difficult not to step right on them. They created streaks of red through the water, and more than once one would slam right into my boot as they swam by. I was carrying my good camera, which was probably a terrible idea considering the very wet nature of the adventure, and the very not-waterproof nature of the camera, so I had it precariously shoved into the top of my waders while I windmilled gracelessly every time I lost my footing. I may have looked like an idiot, but it was Tammy who actually fell in, sitting right down on a dead salmon, which she promptly apologized to. 

    The live salmon weren't the only obstacles clogging up the river: there were the Reds, so many eggs, zombie fish that weren't quite dead yet, and of course the ones who had already given up the ghost. I've never seen so many fish corpses in my life. In the water they were gross enough, but the ones that had been dragged up on shore and partially eaten were the worst: slimy, rotten, and covered in writhing masses of maggots. I took pictures, but I've spared you the horror... this time. Tammy and I both agreed that if we slipped and fell into one of those, the only reasonable course of action would be to instantly strip every bit of clothing off that had touched the maggots and jump into the frigid water to rinse off any wigglers that had touched skin, all while shrieking like a banshee. I know you're on tenterhooks waiting to hear which of us took that plunge, but luckily for us, we only fell on maggot-free ground. 

To get both of those images out of your head, here's a pretty flower:

    Of course, the salmon weren't the only creatures we ran into. This is still in Katmai, so there were bears. Lots of them. Tammy of course recognized all of them (she claims she doesn't know every bear, but she knew every single one we ran into, so I'm calling BS on that one). 

Oh hey, I know these two! #435 and her little meatball cub

Just hamming it up for the camera of course

A random bird, just to change things up a bit

     The trudge downriver wasn't so bad. A bit slippery, bear-infested, and wet, but do-able. The frequent river crossings kept us out of the deepest sections, and sometimes gave us a bank to walk on instead of trying desperately to find footing free of salmon and eggs. The way back, though...

    Tammy had decided we'd been disturbing the salmon too much as we walked, and they'd been through enough just trying to get that far up the creek. On the way back upriver, we were not under any circumstances going to cross the river. What. 

    So instead, we picked a bank and just started walking. Sometimes we'd be waist deep in the water, clinging to the bank by our fingertips, trying not to let our feet get swept out from under us. Other times we'd have to bushwhack through alders and areas that looked like they came right out of the Jurassic Park movies, whenever the water was too deep or too strong and the bank too steep. There were bears slipping in and out of view just ahead, so we had no idea where they were. I kept thinking I was about to walk smack into one. 

    All the while, there would be an easy crossing and an almost perfect trail, just on the other side. On a Tammy-Led Adventure, though, you just go with it. That's how I lost my boot in a deceptively moss-covered mud pit.

    We finally got back, about three miles after we'd both decided we didn't want to be walking anymore, smelling of swamp and dead fish, and looking like we'd been running from raptors all day. All in all, pretty successful.