Free Wild Man Island by Will Hobbs

dropped several thousand feet. At last, through the trees, I saw the slope bottoming out at a rushing creek. The creek was crisscrossed by deadfall spruce and hemlock.
    The Newfoundland seemed eager to get down there. I soon understood why. The stream was teeming with sockeye salmon. “This is more like it,” I told him.
    I approached cautiously. To my relief, there wasn’t a bear in sight. The dog waded into the shallows, lunged at a couple of fish making furious runs around his legs, and missed. He soon came up with a big salmon thrashing in his jaws. The Newfie waded out of the shallows, then dropped the salmon and pinned it with one paw, just like a bear. The body of the fish was bright red, its head dark green. The dog began to strip the skin down the fish’s side, exposing the bright red meat.
    With an occasional look in my direction, the Newfoundland ate the flesh from the backbone. Rather than flip the fish over and eat the other side, he waded back into the stream for a new one.
    By this time I’d whittled a sharp point on a stick of alder and waded into the stream. In a couple of minutes I had my own salmon. For mercy’s sake, I quickly severed its spinal cord behind the neck. The big fish thrashed a few times from reflex, then lay still.
    I sliced a fillet from the backbone on each side and washed them in the stream. I sat on a log in a patch ofsunshine, draped one fillet over a branch at arm’s reach, and began to eat the other one, stripping the red meat with my teeth from its backing of skin. The meat was more than tolerable, and my stomach was going to accept it.
    I had just finished the first fillet and was about to reach for the second. A bit of motion caught my eye. I looked up, and there was a big bear at streamside, not forty feet away. Over the rush of the creek, I hadn’t heard it approach, not at all. Why hadn’t the dog barked?
    The Newfoundland, rather than barking or running away, was slowly moving toward the bear.
    For its part, the bear had its head to the ground. It was standing over the spear. Why hadn’t I kept the spear at hand?
    The knife was also out of reach, there on the gravel where I’d used it.
    Wagging his tail, the dog waded the stream and walked right up to the bear. To my amazement, the Newfoundland rose on hind legs and pawed the bear’s shoulder. In response, the bear gently raked the dog’s side with its claws, then took the dog’s entire head in its jaws.
    All the while, the brownie had his eyes on me. I kept looking from the bear to the knife. It was too far away.
    Anyway, it was too late. The bear was ambling over to me. To me or the fillet on the branch, I couldn’t tell.
    The bear stood on two legs and clawed the air. I stayed exactly where I was and tried to calm my jackhammering heart.
    The bear came down on all fours, approached the last few steps. With one eye on me, the bear reached out and flicked the fillet from the branch, then proceeded to eat it practically at my feet. I could have almost touched the huge muscled hump on its back.
    There was a scrap of fish left under that giant paw. And here was the Newfoundland, nosing in as if to take it for himself.
    The bear growled at the dog, and the dog backed away.
    It was all so strange, so dreamlike, and I couldn’t begin to understand what was going on.
    When the bear was finished eating, he turned around and planted himself at the foot of the log right next to me. Just sat there on his hind end and put his huge face next to mine.
    I didn’t know what to do. I did nothing. I tried to keep as calm as I could.
    The bear got up, nuzzled the dog again, then ambled away.
    Hours later, as I followed the dog up the flank of another mountain ridge and deeper into the island’s interior, I was still trying to sort out what had happened, and how, and why.
    I got nowhere. I had no idea.
    It was dusk by the time an explanation came to mind. The big Newfoundland