KQED Channel 9: Sun, Apr 20, 2008 -- 12:30 PM

Grizzlies, cougars and wolves - creatures full of metaphor and part of the spirit of the West - are featured in this program, which goes in search of the meaning these large predators hold for various people of the Pacific Northwest. The production was filmed in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming amid the sweeping landscape where these animals live. The camera captures images of the living legends and the people who know them. Nez Perce elder Horace Axtell says the animals are "in some sense, like brothers." He says it is about being connected: "All of these are connected in a way that old people used to live a long time ago." Doug Peacock, author of Grizzly Years and a Vietnam veteran, headed into the backcountry to heal himself and met North America's largest bears, bumping against grizzlies accidentally. "Only an experience that original, that primal, that powerful would have let me exorcise my own ghosts." Author Rick Bass says, "I don't think we'll ever know how much they're intertwined with the place." The wilderness landscape of the American West has shaped the American culture, he says, and the connection to the large animals of the wilderness is still out there "even if you don't feel it."

KQED 9: Sun, Apr 20, 2008 -- 12:30 PM

Grizzlies, cougars and wolves - creatures full of metaphor and part of the spirit of the West - are featured in this program, which goes in search of the meaning these large predators hold for various people of the Pacific Northwest. The production was filmed in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming amid the sweeping landscape where these animals live. The camera captures images of the living legends and the people who know them. Nez Perce elder Horace Axtell says the animals are "in some sense, like brothers." He says it is about being connected: "All of these are connected in a way that old people used to live a long time ago." Doug Peacock, author of Grizzly Years and a Vietnam veteran, headed into the backcountry to heal himself and met North America's largest bears, bumping against grizzlies accidentally. "Only an experience that original, that primal, that powerful would have let me exorcise my own ghosts." Author Rick Bass says, "I don't think we'll ever know how much they're intertwined with the place." The wilderness landscape of the American West has shaped the American culture, he says, and the connection to the large animals of the wilderness is still out there "even if you don't feel it."