Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen

Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen

Author:Jack Olsen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Travel, Retail, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780686597940
Publisher: Crime Rant Classics
Published: 1969-12-15T05:00:00+00:00


Lying in his uncomfortable bed in Granite Park Chalet, on the other side of a 9,000-foot wall of rock from the campers at Trout Lake, Dr. John Lipinski laughed to himself as he thought about the situation. Thirteen years before, he and his wife, Ann, had grown tired of the industrial dirt and noisy traffic and increasing congestion in the city of Chicago and decided to head for the Wild West, where they could indulge their love of nature and spend day after day hiking on wilderness trails. Lipinski was a surgeon, and his wife was a nurse, and when they had set up practice in the lumber town of Kalispell, Montana, the demands on their skills had been so incessant that it had taken them four years to find the time to make their first overnight hike—into Sperry Chalet, to see the mountain goats. Now, eight years after that momentous occasion, they were on their second overnight hike, into Granite Park to see the bears. With them were their daughter, Terese, 16, and their two adopted sons, Robin, 5, and Karl, 4. They had seen one bear, but not very clearly, and just before they had turned in, Terese had told her parents about a conversation with one of the chalet employees.

“How do the bears get there?” Terese had asked.

“Oh, they come to eat the garbage that we put out, ” the other young girl replied.

“But don’t you think that’s kind of dangerous?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, the people come up here to see grizzlies, and we have to show them some. That’s what most of them are here for.”

Lying in bed half asleep, Dr. Lipinski pondered this explanation and, in truth, he could not find it unreasonable. Years before, he had hitchhiked into Yellowstone and observed the grizzlies being fed, and one night he had heard shots as rangers exterminated a few bears that had lost their fear of man. The surgeon had great respect for park rangers, and he knew that any bear that strayed out of line would be exterminated. The simple fact that the Granite Park bears were still alive was proof enough to Dr. Lipinski that they were harmless.

Fighting insomnia alongside her tall husband, Ann Lipinski was not so relaxed about the matter. She had been brought up in a teeming Polish section of Chicago, unlike her North Dakota-bred husband, and the wilderness still seemed mysterious to her. One could talk to Ann Lipinski for hours about the gentle, shy ways of the big grizzlies, but she would never change her attitude that anything that weighed up to 1,000 pounds and had teeth like ten penny nails and claws as long and as sharp as switchblade knives was just plain dangerous, always was, always would be.

The night was cool outside, but the thick timbers of the chalet had taken an all-day baking from the sun, and Ann Lipinski pitched and tossed and perspired and worried in the closeness of the overheated room. Her



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