No roads, paved or otherwise, lead to Katmai National Park and Preserve, which lies at the northeast extreme of the Alaska Peninsula. To get to Katmai's 480-mile coast, you don't need a dogsled anymore. At the very least, though, you'll have to find your way to Anchorage, where you can book a short flight to Kodiak or Homer, from either of which, at considerable expense, you will then have to charter a floatplane. Weather permitting, the pilot will fly into the Shelikof Strait and land in one of several pristine, sheltered bays bordered by black sand beaches, green hills, and ragged blue-black mountains. If you can afford to hire one, a boat will be there waiting for you. If not, you'll be on your own—just you, the bald eagles, the wolves, and approximately 2,000 Alaskan brown bears.
Brown bears are grizzly bears. They're generally called brown when they live on the coast, grizzly if they live inland, but they're otherwise indistinguishable: giant, cuddly-looking apex predators with intimidating incisors, long, curved claws, fur ranging from frosty blond to deep brown, and enough muscle mass to tear your head from your shoulders with a single swipe. In other words, they are the perfect subjects for Olly and Suzi (known to the British government as Oliver Williams and Susan Winstanley), the London-based art duo who have made a name for themselves by traveling to far-flung corners of the planet to paint and draw lions, tigers, polar bears, African wild dogs, great white sharks, orcas, anacondas, crocodiles, and predatory Antarctic leopard seals, among other creatures. "The bush is our studio," as Olly likes to say.
Olly is gigantic. His limbs are no thicker than you'd expect of an ex-rugby player on the north side of his thirties, and his almost cherubic face would not look out of place on someone half his size. But Olly's torso is enormous. Standing, he looks more than formidable. Sitting, he looks unmovable. Suzi, by comparison, is tiny. She's slim with a fine-featured face topped by a mop of kinky black hair. Next to anyone else she would perhaps appear taller than average, but next to Olly—and since they first teamed up in art school nearly 20 years ago, she has more often than not been next to Olly—Suzi looks like a dandelion stalk.
So after meeting them in the Anchorage airport en route to Katmai, I made a decision. I knew we would encounter bears, although I could not have guessed that we would soon find ourselves standing in the middle of a meadow where no fewer than sixteen grizzlies grazed peacefully on sedge grass like mutant, steroidal sheep, or that oversized cubs would frolic mere feet in front of us like unsupervised teens at summer camp. I didn't know how close the bears might try to get, or how they'd feel about our presence. But I knew that if they got too close, I would make every effort to stand behind Olly.
Olly named his five-year-old son Bear. When his wife, Lisa, gave birth to a daughter last year, they named the child Kora, after the game preserve in Kenya. Olly takes a boyish pleasure in huge and dangerous animals. He can tell you how to stalk a tiger, and why you should be wary of African buffalos: "They track you, they come after you, and they tromp you. They love to kill you." His enthusiasm extends to dangerous humans. Olly likes to tell stories about mates in the army, mates who are ex–South African Secret Service. He admires Churchill, Roosevelt (Teddy, not Franklin), and Hemingway. He carries two knives and can talk endlessly about guns and all varieties of military hardware from watch straps to C-130s. He worked for years as a bouncer and, he says vaguely, in "security-related work with a military bent." He drinks dark rum swirled with fruit juice, and once, after a few drinks in a Homer bar, took the trouble to reassure me that he had never killed anyone.
