Polar express

CHURCHILL, Manitoba – “Over there, I see something!” someone yelled. On a lakeshore a few hundred yards away, across a thin sheet of ice, a yellowish blob lay in contrast to the new white snow. Glenn Hopfner, our driver, steered closer, and everyone reached for their binoculars and cameras. Collectively, we gasped. A mother polar bear, rocked back on her haunches, head tilted skyward and eyes closed, was nursing a cub. It was like a Renaissance painting: the Madonna of the Tundra. “I can’t tell you how lucky you are,” Hopfner marveled. “In 700 trips I’ve made out here, I’ve seen this eight times.” It was our second day tracking polar bears in the tundra off Hudson Bay in the far reaches of Northern Canada. We had 27 sightings the first day out.

Polartec-ed up to our eyeballs, long-lens cameras and spotting scopes at the ready, we trundled along in trailer-like buggies set atop tires as tall as me that put us out of reach of any curious – and, most likely, murderous – 1,000-pound bears.

There are only a few places on the planet where humans can see polar bears in their natural environment, and, even then, for just a brief window before winter sets in. But during the last weeks of autumn – usually from the middle of October to early November – no place on Earth has more polar bears than Churchill.

It is here that hundreds of bears, stranded by melting pack ice, spend the warmer months (a relative measure this far north), waiting for temperatures to drop and the ice to form again so they can start hunting and fatten up for the colder months.

During these few weeks, visitors can take carefully guided tours to see the bears, heading outside of the historic, frontier town of Churchill to clamber aboard tundra buggies for a day of inching along rutted trails in search of wildlife.

Our group of about 20, organized by Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, had met up in Winnipeg two nights earlier, before heading north the next morning aboard a puddle jumper prop plane.

Warm soup and sandwiches served us during the long hours on the trails. The buggies, while heated, instantly grew frigid whenever a window was opened to look at the bears.

The smartest thing I had done was buy a fleece Polartec blanket, thinking it would keep my lap warm. Instead, I used it for cushion and insulation on the thin, vinyl seats. If your bottom stays warm, I discovered, so does the rest of you.

But while it was cold for us humans, the snow and freezing temperatures had arrived late – a troublesome omen for a species that, perhaps more than any other, has come to symbolize the potential impact of climate change.

The bears feast on ringed seals, which live year-round in the Arctic waters, but they must have pack ice to serve as their hunting platforms. As the ice continues to retreat, the bears must swim longer distances to find food.

Scientists already have documented polar bear drownings, and researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey reported that the melting ice may be forcing the bears to move onto land, where food supplies are scarce.

The U.S. Department of Interior last year proposed designating them a threatened species. But it was hard not to see bears on this trip.

Generally, polar bears aren’t gregarious. But many congregated off the Hudson Bay shoreline, so we drove there to watch the young males wrestle endlessly with each other, rolling around as if they were born without joints. Often, one would come up to our buggy, stand on its hind legs and peer up at us.

Bears, of course, weren’t the only creatures on the agenda. We took time, too, to search out the beautiful artic hares, so still and white only the dark tips of their ears gave them away.

We saw an artic fox, white like the hare, repeatedly jump straight up into the air and pound on a mound of seaweed trying to force out something edible.

Birds included owls, auks, the plump willow ptarmigan and even a gyrfalcon (in pursuit of aforementioned willow ptarmigan).

But the bears stole the show. How could they not?

At one point we pulled over to watch a mother and her cub near the edge of a small pond. As she snoozed, the young bear practiced using his front legs as a battering ram against the ice – what adults do to break through ice and get to a seal.

Then he practiced walking on ice. (Adult bears weigh as much as 1,700 pounds, but distribute their weight so adroitly over their tire-sized paws that they can walk on ice just one-half inch thick, according to Hopfer.)

After a while, bored, the cub took to sledding across the pond on his chest, all four legs splayed out. He looked like a rug.

He was skating on thin ice, and loving it.