Grizzly Man Page #10

My camp is unseen.

It is the most dangerous camping,

the most dangerous living

in the history of the world

by any human being.

I have lived longer with wild brown

grizzly bears, without weapons,

and that's the key, without weapons,

in modern history

than any human on earth,

any human.

And I have remained safe.

But every second of every day that I move

through this jungle, or even at the tent,

I am right on the precipice

of great bodily harm or even death.

And I am so thankful

for every minute of every day

that I found the bears

and this place,

the Grizzly Maze.

But let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen.

There is no, no, no

other place in the world

that is more dangerous, more exciting

than the Grizzly Maze.

Come here and camp here.

Come here and try to do what I do.

You will die.

You will die here.

You will frickin' die here.

They will get you.

I found a way. I found a way

to survive with them.

Am I a great person?

I don't know. I don't know.

We're all great people. Everyone has

something in them that's wonderful.

I'm just different. And I love these bears

enough to do it right.

And I'm edgy enough

and I'm tough enough.

But mostly I love these bears enough

to survive and do it right.

And I'm never giving this up.

Never giving it up.

Never giving up the Maze.

Never.

This is it.

This is my life.

This is my land.

Very late in the process

of editing this film,

we were given access

to Treadwell's last videotape.

Here he may have filmed

his murderer.

The killer bear we know

was a male

whom years earlier

the Park Service had anesthetized.

They extracted a tooth

which established him

as being 28

at the time of the attack.

Quite old for a bear.

They also tagged him

via a tattoo on his inner lip.

They had given him

a number only, 141.

Bear 141.

That's all we know of him.

And here.

Could this one be Bear 141?

What looks playful

could be desperation.

So late in the season,

the bear is diving deep

for one of the few

remaining salmon carcasses

at the bottom of the lake.

Treadwell keeps filming the bear

with a strange persistence.

And all of a sudden, this.

Is Amie trying

to get out of the shot?

Did Treadwell wait till his last tape

to put her in his film?

And what haunts me,

is that in all the faces

of all the bears

that Treadwell ever filmed,

I discover no kinship,

no understanding, no mercy.

I see only the overwhelming

indifference of nature.

To me, there is no such thing

as a secret world of the bears.

And this blank stare speaks

only of a half-bored interest in food.

But for Timothy Treadwell,

this bear was a friend, a savior.

Amie Huguenard was screaming.

All of a sudden, the intensity

of Amie's screaming

reached a new height

and became very, very loud.

And she really now was screaming

at the top of her lungs.

These horrifying screams

were punctuated by Timothy saying,

"Go away. Leave me.

Go away. Run! Get out of here."

In other words, Timothy is trying

now to save Amie's life

because Timothy realizes,

at this point in time during this attack,

Timothy knows he's gonna die.

He knows that.

My sense of listening

to this tape

is that the bear let go,

probably let go

of the top of his head where

I found massive lacerations.

That is tears of the scalp

away from his head.

Suddenly, though, the bear,

after letting go,

grabbed Timothy somewhere

in the high leg area.

And Timothy, appropriately in my opinion,

as a human being,

decided now is the time

to save one life anyway.

If his life was going away,

if his life was fading away,

now was the time

for Amie to get out.

The expedition coming close to a close,

but I'm still here.

It's been over four months

in the wilderness.

And a hurricane-force

storm now building.

Over 50-mile-an-hour winds,

soon over 70.

The bears safely

heading for their dens.

The work...

the work successful.

I'm over 20 pounds lighter.

My clothes are rags.

I've tried hard. I bleed for them,

I live for them, I die for them.

I love them. I love this.

It's tough work.

But it's the only work I know.

It's the only work I'll ever want.

Take care of these animals.

Take care of this land.

He seems to hesitate in leaving

the last frame of his own film.

It's the only thing I know.

It's the only thing

I wanna know.

Treadwell is gone.

The argument how wrong

or how right he was

disappears into a distance

into a fog.

What remains is his footage.

And while we watch the animals

in their joys of being,

in their grace

and ferociousness,

a thought becomes

more and more clear.

That it is not so much

a look at wild nature

as it is an insight

into ourselves, our nature.

And that, for me,

beyond his mission,

gives meaning to his life

and to his death.

Now the longhorns are gone

And the drovers are gone

The Comanches are gone

And the outlaws are gone

Geronimo's gone

And Sam Bass is gone

And the lion is gone

- And the red wolf is gone

- And Treadwell is gone

Well, he cursed all the roads

and the old mule

And he cursed the automobile

Said this is no place

for an hombre like I am

In this new world

of asphalt and steel

Then he'd look off

someplace in the distance

At something

only he could see

He'd say all that's left now

are the old days

Damned old coyotes and me

And they'd go

Now the longhorns are gone

And the drovers are gone

The Comanches are gone

The outlaws are gone

Now Quantrill is gone

Stan Wanty is gone

And the lion is gone

And the red wolf is gone

One morning they searched

his adobe

He disappeared

without even a word

But that night as the moon

crossed the mountain

One more coyote was heard

And he'd go

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