The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears
by Nick Jans
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nick JansEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-01-31
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 288
Book Reviews of The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears
Book Review: The story of an intriguing character who saw grizzly bears as his friends, with tragic consequences
Summary: 4 Stars
Review of "The Grizzly Maze" by Nick Jans
Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed by grizzly bears in Alaska, and six minutes of the attack on Treadwell were recorded on the soundtrack of his camcorder. The existence of this tape, combined with Treadwell's celebrity status, his hundreds of hours of film footage of the animals he loved, and his dogged determination to be up close and personal with grizzly bears, captured public curiosity about his life and resulted in books, articles and films.
Nick Jans' well-researched book, "The Grizzly Maze", approaches Treadwell's story more from an ethological perspective than a psychological one. It details Treadwell's behaviour and includes the views of a wide variety of people who came into contact with him. Pilots of chartered float planes, wildlife rangers, friends, critics, supporters, and the people who dealt with the aftermath of the horrific bear attack all get a chance to give their take on Treadwell as a person and on the controversial nature of his interactions with bears.
The book also paints a picture the Katmai National Park and the community of bears that Treadwell was drawn to year after year, placing them in a dramatic landscape that makes you want to jump into one of those tiny float planes and soar in the air whilst the magnificent landscape unfolds below. One of my favourite passages in the book is Jans' description of the plane journey that took him away from the site where Timothy and Amie met their tragic deaths. Jans writes of flying ...
"... away from Kaflia and the torn remains of the bears, through a craggy, glacier-draped pass, and a funnel of austere peaks where the first snow lay spackled on dark rock. Then a land of sparsely forested valleys, crystal rivers and lakes, that in turn was replaced by a volcanic moonscape - the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. First came the Novarupta Crater, site of the massive 1912 blast that remains one of the most violent single volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Then we passed low over a mountainside where fumaroles vented steam into the air; shortly after the eruption there had been thousands of such "smokes,"which gave the place its name. Beyond lay a vast, undulating plain of volcanic ash, the Valley itself, which more resembled a stretch of Arabian desert than anything Alaskan. Once-lush forests of birch, balsam poplar, and spruce had stood there, now blasted flat and buried, perhaps to be unearthed and marvelled over by geologists in some future world. Across the face of this desolation the River Lethe carved its own stark canyon. The valley gave way to a line of trees and brush; the world became itself again, and beyond, the blue-tinged glacial waters of thirty-five-mile-long Naknek Lake."
Jans' writing style sweeps the reader along and makes you want to keep reading. I learned a lot about Treadwell by being given access to the thoughts and opinions of people who knew him, and who often had strong feelings about the life he chose and the risks he took. I also learned a great deal about bears, tourists, conservation, and how to behave around bears. By the end of the book, I felt like I'd been given a glimpse of the place that Treadwell thought of as home and the bears that - with such terrible consequences - he saw as his friends.
I highly recommend Jans' book and guarantee it will make you want to read more! I suggest that it is followed by Timothy Treadwell's own book, "Among Grizzlies", which was co-authored by his friend Jewel Palovak. For a slightly more psychological approach, I recommend "Death in the Grizzly Maze" by Mike Lapinski. And, of course, Werner Herzog's film "Grizzly Man" is not to be missed.
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