Growing up in northern Alberta, Canada, young Trina Moyles played with bear figurines and “wanted to grow fur and walk on all fours.” Not surprising, perhaps, since her father was a wildlife biologist who sometimes briefly brought home injured animals, like a barred owl, coyote pups and even a black bear cub. Moyles also loved to follow her lively older brother, Brendan, around: her “magnetic north.”
The pair became estranged as adults, however, as Moyles recounts in her riveting memoir, Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival. While she traveled abroad, working for and writing about human rights organizations, Brendan worked long, exhausting shifts in the oil sands. He struggled with addiction. During one turbulent period, Moyles felt so ashamed of his drug use that she “learned to become an only child. To harden and brace myself to expect the worst from my brother.”
Eventually, they found their way back to each other, although the truce often felt uneasy, especially since their worldviews often clashed. His life depended on big oil, while Moyles worked for a number of years as a fire tower lookout in the wilds of Alberta, alone with her dogs from April through September, loving “the thrill of climbing one hundred rungs up a vertical ladder to reach my office every morning, and the extraordinary views of the forest and skies.” Her perch also gave her a front-row seat to deforestation, wildlife loss of habitat, increasing forest fires and climate change.
What truly absorbed Moyles—and will equally transfix readers—were the black bears who roamed the area. At first, she distrusted them, but eventually found ways to coexist. When a pair of cubs began to lounge around her cabin, she started to “feel a bit like an auntie.” She became so engrossed that one of her friends had to remind her that she was not, in fact, a bear. Meanwhile, living with these wild animals also allowed her to gain perspective on her relationship with Brendan, prompting her to wonder: “What had my fear prevented me from seeing and contextualizing? . . . The only consensus we’d come to was a deepening fear of the other.”
Moyles is a precise, engaging, informative narrator who sweeps readers up in her vast world. The lessons that the bears teach her about herself, her brother and the value of human relationships are in turns heartwarming and heartbreaking. She seamlessly moves back and forth between natural and human habitats with elegant, understated prose, making her points with grace, logic and empathy. Black Bear is reminiscent of the very best nature writing, belonging on the shelf with Raising Hare, H Is for Hawk and Late Migrations.