【查理?罗素：与熊共舞】罗素兄弟

　　Commotion1) in the distance catches Charlie Russell’s eye and he squints2) into the sun to make out the shapes of three brown bears. They are heading towards him—fast. Snow explodes around them every time their massive paws hit the ground. But Russell stays put. When they get a metre or so from him, the towering animals slow down to a stroll. The leading bear holds her face very close to Russell’s. She nuzzles his nose with her own and Russell breaks into a smile. “Hey, little bear,” he says.
　　Here the audience holds its breath. It’s 2010—five years later—and we’re in Whitehorse, Yukon, where a whitehaired Russell stands before a crowded conference room as a documentary about his life, The Edge of Eden, flickers3) behind him. Local citizens have come to get, first-hand, the story of the “Bear Man of Kamchatka4).”
　　Russell, now 70, earned this title after he relocated to the easternmost part of Russia, built a cabin at the base of a lakeside volcano and spent more than ten springs and summers living with brown bears—the taller, heavier cousin of the North American grizzly5).
　　“No question, bears are dangerous,” says Russell, but he also argues that demonizing6) them prevents us from recognizing their intelligent, playful and peaceful nature. “They attack us because we abuse them,” he insists, and for the last two years he has travelled across Canada, lecturing in communities where bears are considered a nuisance. “What I want to do now is work on the human side of the problem,” Russell says. In a country where cities spread deep into the rural landscape and hunters kill about 450 grizzlies annually, he is determined to change the way we treat our ursine neighbours.
　　Russell was raised with the idea that “the only good bear is a dead bear.” His father, a hunter and outfitter7), shared stories of bloodthirsty8) grizzlies with his five children. However, when the family’s hunting business faltered9) in the early 1960s, Russell and his brother joined their father on an expedition to film grizzlies in Alaska. Russell couldn’t help but wonder why bears behaved aggressively towards gun-toters, but left the filmmakers alone10). “I suspected they didn’t like cruelty,” he says.
　　In 1994 he tested out his theory in British Columbia’s Khutzeymateen Inlet, where he took tourists on bearviewing excursions. One afternoon, while resting on a log between guiding trips, Russell sat still as a female grizzly casually approached. “I knew if I did not move, she would keep coming,” he later wrote in his 2002 book Grizzly Heart. “I had decided to let her come as close as she wanted.” Russell spoke to the bear in gentle tones and she sat down beside him. She put her paw on his hand and Russell reciprocated11) the gesture, touching her nose, lip and teeth. These were the iron jaws featured in his father’s campfire stories, now no more threatening than the snout of a puppy. If he could repeat similar moments—and perhaps photograph the encounters—Russell believed he could prove that “just by treating bears kindly, people can live safely with them.”