‘Grizzly Country’ Explores Doug Peacock’s Relationship with Bears
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Many people, especially in the Northern Rockies and Alaska, will happily tell you stories about their encounters with grizzly bears. However, most of those stories involve having their lives threatened by bears, not saved by them. Doug Peacock has plenty of terrifying stories about bears, but they are told with respect and understanding instead of the all-too-common fear and hatred. In fact, Peacock maintains that grizzly bears saved his life.
When Peacock makes this claim, he doesn't mean that a kind bear found him freezing to death in the wilderness and nursed him back to health. Instead, he is referring to his mental trauma after two tours in Vietnam as a medic with the U.S. Army Special Forces. He describes his mental state as "out of sorts" following the horrific sights of the Vietnam War, and credits his years spent filming and advocating for bears with healing his psyche.
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As an interesting aside, Peacock was a friend of Edward Abbey's, and is the real-life inspiration for the character George Hayduke who appears in The Monkey Wrench Gang, according to National Geographic.
