The polar bear was in no hurry. Early morning, mid-September, and she hadn’t eaten a real meal in two months. The ice she was waiting for might not arrive for two more, so she moved with a regal forbearance. She ambled slowly off the tidal flats with the whitecaps of the bay rolling in behind her. A thousand snow geese startled off the tundra with a boisterous clamor, banked against the onshore wind and blazed white in a rising wave. The bear lifted her nose to the birds. A harrier fluttered just above her, hunting probably the mice she scared up. The bear pushed through dense willows and onto the dirt airstrip, where the lodge sat at the edge of the woods, overlooking the open lowland and the sea. She turned west down the runway and trundled past the lodge gate, pushing her long shadow ahead of her. Butch, Nolan and I watched, holding our rods. We were eager to go fish the purest strain of brook trout on earth, which would mean moving in her direction. But she caught our scent and paused; she swung her head until her button eyes looked right at us, as if to say, “Step one foot outside that fence and you are in my house.”