Excerpts and Reviews

Chilling Lessons by Richard Nelson

A confident smile crossed the man's face as he remembered what happened next.

"I lay down on the ice, sideways to the bear, so he'd see something long and dark, and I started acting like a seal that comes up through a crack to sleep on the ice."The hunter paused to fasten my attention, as he often did when he had something important to say.

"I wanted that bear to hunt me," he said. "Every once in a while, I lifted my head really quick, like a seal looking around to make sure there's no danger. Then I put my head back down, same as a seal when it starts sleeping again. Pretty soon I saw the bear crawling toward me, really slow--hunting that little seal, he thinks."

There was no hint of recollected fear in the old man's voice, nor a trace of bluster or bravado.

"That bear kept coming closer and closer. I waited till he got really close. And by the time I shot, I knew there was no way to miss. That's how I got the bear." (Read the entire essay as excerpted in Sierra Magazine.)