by  Keith R. Crowley

The Yellowstone Grizzly known as “Blaze”

Trying to make sense of last week’s fatal Grizzly bear attack on a hiker in Yellowstone National Park and its aftermath is a fool’s errand. But this fool is going to try anyway.

This kind of story wrenches its way deep into the psyche of all who spend time in the wilds. And it certainly wrenched its way deep into my soul since I spend months each year in Yellowstone and the surrounding Grizzly Country.

To make it even more personal, I, like many of my colleagues, came to “know” the bear believed to be involved in the attack.

I put “know” in quotes because it’s a fallacy to think we can really know a wild animal. There is simply no way to get inside their heads. Hell, most of us don’t even understand our own pets’ behavior very well, so we can forget about…