Page 14 of Driving Him Wild

I finished adjusting the exposure to compensate for the darkening sky and took an initial short burst of photos of the polar bear family. Then I swapped the lens for a sixteen-millimetre, for wide-angle shots, and took another burst.

Surprisingly, she remained quiet throughout, didn’t fill the silence with mindless chatter, which I appreciated.

‘Can the cubs swim at their age?’ she asked when I lowered the camera after five minutes.

‘If they’re more than a few months old, yes, for short periods. But with more distances between icy landscapes some bears have been seen swimming with their young on their backs.’

She nodded, her gaze on the ice floe. ‘Is it dangerous for them?’ she asked.

‘Danger comes from all angles in this environment. This is a slow-moving floe and surrounded by

frozen land on three sides. The mother would be on the lookout to ensure they don’t drift too far.’

‘That’s great, but it’s moving...towards us.’

I curbed a smile as I swapped cameras and grabbed a tripod to set up more stills. ‘We’ll be gone

before it gets to us.’

She nodded again, but her gaze grew speculative, shifting from the bears to the other floes. They

varied in size from a few metres to ones the size of football fields, all broken away from the mass that would normally have stayed solid well into the new year.

‘Can I get a short video of the floes, too?’

‘Sure.’

She didn’t interrupt or badger me with questions once I got into the flow of things. Hell, she even took herself off a short distance away, taking out her phone to take pictures of the distant Alaskan Range and the beginning of the spectacular orange on white sunsets that graced this stunning part of the world.

She returned in time to witness the bears’ floe touch another one and the mother supervising her

cubs jumping from their floating platform onto a larger one.

With one last warning look over her shoulder, the mother bear escorted her cubs away towards a

jagged mountain peak.

‘How long before they go into hibernation?’

‘Another two or three weeks.’

She frowned. ‘They don’t look nearly padded up enough.’

I shrugged. ‘Probably because they have to travel farther distances to feed.’

As if on cue, a loud, sharp crack sounded. Camera poised, I swung around in time to capture the

towering wall of ice break away from a glacier to crash into the lake.

The sound seemed to echo for ever, bouncing off the icy landscape in perfect surround sound.

Beside me, Graciela gave a soft gasp. ‘God. That’s...’

I lowered the camera and glanced at her. ‘It’s breathtaking and awe-inspiring until you remember

that it shouldn’t be happening?’

Her face shuttered, her brows creasing in a frown.

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