I went to this wild island for one specific reason and it didn’t show up

Sometimes nature just refuses to come to the party. Take Kodiak bears. Together with polar bears, they’re the world’s largest land carnivore. Clyde, the biggest known Kodiak bear, was estimated to weigh a tonne before he died in a North Dakota zoo in 1987. I’m keen to see one up close in its natural habitat, so I set a course for the place where they roam by the thousands – Kodiak Island.

The US’s second-largest island (after the Big Island of Hawaii) lies off Alaska’s southern coast. If you kept on island-hopping from Kodiak, via the Alaska Marine Highway System or one of the rare cruises that cross the Pacific from Alaska to Japan, you’d hit that elegant arc of the Aleutian Islands.

You can fly from Anchorage to Kodiak – but where’s the adventure in that? I head to Homer to board the overnight ferry and chug along the marine highway. It’s a no-frills journey infused with bonhomie (other passengers include a group of elderly southern baptists embarking on their annual fishing trip).

We dock and, after I recover from the unexpected sight of wind turbines lining a ridge above the City of Kodiak, a local shows me around. The island, also home to the country’s largest Coast Guard base, has only 140 kilometres of roads so you can’t go far. We stop at a bridge and peer down at a creek. Huge bear prints are pressed into its muddy banks. My heart leaps. Surely a bear looms in my not-too-distant future.

My next stop is a dock. I’m catching a float-plane to the island’s interior to stay at the Kodiak Brown Bear Centre and Lodge (Kodiak bears are a subspecies of brown bears). The waterfront lodge, owned by the Alutiiq people who have inhabited the island for more than 7000 years, runs bear-viewing expeditions from July to September. Guests usually stay at least four days. As I’m about to discover, there’s good reason for that.

I have special travel-writer dispensation to squeeze in for just one night. Full of optimism, I join other guests for an afternoon of viewing near a stream off Karluk Lake. Settling into our spot we wait, heads swivelling at the slightest crackle of grass or bending of branch. We spy a Sitka black-tailed deer and a flailing coho salmon but no bears. Finally, we give up and trudge back to the boat.

In the morning we try again; still no dice. “Enjoy your meditation session?” asks the boat driver. Ha ha, so not funny. I thought that was my last chance to see a bear but, after the lodge communicates with the float-plane pilot who’s coming to fetch me, we squeeze in another outing. It’s a case of third time unlucky.

The pilot can’t believe my bad luck. “You didn’t see a bear? Let me show you bears!” he says as we skitter over the lake and lift into the air. Sure enough, dozens of bears are dotted along a fish-rich stream below. I don’t reach for my camera; instead, I barely blink as I sear the sight into memory.

I spend another two days on Kodiak, pottering around its “big smoke” bearing Russian street names (a reminder of its fur-trade past) and catching a ride with new friends to Fort Abercrombie State Historical Park where puffins flit past a bluff. I have one final chance to see a Kodiak bear before leaving Alaska. Anchorage’s airport is so keen on taxidermy it could double as a natural history museum. While inspecting its resident bears’ dinner plate-sized feet, non-retractable claws and waterproof shag-pile fur, I tell them I’m not done yet – I will be back.