We painted every day from morning until after the sun went down. This last painting was a fast one because the light changed so quickly. The evening of this painting a mama grizzly and three cubs ran about 40 feet from us down to the river. It was an amazingly beautiful sight as the bears crossed the river right in front of us in the low but iridescent light and disappeared into the bush. I am awed at the number of mama grizzlies with cubs I've seen in the past couple of years on painting trips--Denali, Glacier and the Tetons. Guess I'm just hanging out in the right places!
My niece, who lives in Jackson, questioned whether the bears I saw there were actually grizzlies. First, in the case of the two Denali mama grizzlies and cubs and the Glacier National Park mama grizzly and cubs on the north shore of Lake Josephine, there were expert witnesses--the guides. In the case of the Tetons I have no doubt it was a mama grizzly because she crossed the river no more than 150 feet from our painting group and I could see clearly the typical hump back shape of a grizzly as compared to a black bear. There are many grizzlies in the Tetons I later found out and it is possible that the mama grizzly we saw down on the river was the same one reported crossing the main Teton highway in June--the famous Bear "399" otherwise known as the Angelina Jolie of grizzlies in the Grand Tetons. I can't be sure about this, because the cubs we saw were a lot bigger and I don't know how much they grow in four months.
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