There were easier ways to celebrate thirty years of marriage, but I wanted to see the bears. The fat fishing bears at Brooks Falls in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. We could have hired a bush flight to dash us across the waters of Cook Inlet for a few hours of bear watching from a safe distance, fill a memory card with pictures, then fly back to the city to toast champagne over a fancy dinner. Mission accomplished. But we chose the hard way, on water, where we began our love affair, on a raging river with a leaky raft. Thirty years of these waterborne adventures had brought us closer together, split us apart, even nearly killed us. Rivers, lakes, oceans. Raft, dory, kayak, canoe. Talachulitna, Alsek, Kongakut, Nigu, Canning, Colorado…We were camped on the shore of Lake Grosvenor on the second day of an eight-day guided trip to Brooks Falls. I lay awake in our tent, staring out the small plastic window at our feet. I saw nothing but the gray swells and the white foam of waves on the lake, as if we were adrift on the ocean, yet our white and yellow dome tent was tethered securely by stout metal poles and brightly-colored ropes against the pummeling wind.