Follow the footsteps. Step by step, they step in the same footstep, over and over again, day after day, month after month, year after year. Generation after generation of grizzly bear may use the same trail and step in the same exact spots, creating brown islands of footprints in the mossy carpet of the rainforest. Is this a game? Is it to preserve the delicate groundcover of the forest? Is it a way to relate to ancestors of bears past? Is it like the human superstition not to step on the cracks in the sidewalk?

Any considerations of logic and mystery aside, we discovered pad print stepping stones created for whatever reason by the brown bears of Chichagof Island. Stretches of rainforest, meadow and muskeg were dotted with the eternal steps of these large brown creatures. We hiked Fox Creek near the top of Idaho Inlet across flower-emblazoned meadows, skirting the creek, through spruce and hemlock forest, past skunk cabbage swamps, and up through matted overgrown vegetation to an undulating bog of reflecting pools, bonsai plants and long open views.

Sea Bird travelers pondered the grizzly footprints embossed in the moss of the forest. With several real life encounters with these furry symbols of wild Alaska the past few days, we wonder what it is to be a bear. What's it like to walk a mile in someone else's steps?