When we drove past the whale bones and reached the edge of the ice that might as well have been the end of the world, we spotted a mother polar bear and her cubs taking a nap. Art parked the rusty van nearby, grabbed his video camera and got out. I hesitated for a few minutes -- we seemed awfully close. The mother and her two cubs didn’t seem startled, so I followed Art's lead and slowly opened my door, but I stood close by the van. The bears started to move, stretching and rubbing their eyes. The cubs stood up and walked around their mother. Then they started coming closer. The mother raised her head.

“Time to get back in the van,” Art said. I was already on my way inside.

We watched from our windows as the cubs came over and sniffed the van. One jumped up at the window and Art yelled at him. Then he drove away, headed back toward the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kaktovik. In the distance a mirage of whites and blues and purples hung over the ice and mountains, the Arctic sun making everything otherworldly. The silhouettes of polar bears roamed in the distance.

Kaktovik sits on Barter Island along the Beaufort Sea and just north of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I visited in October 2007 to check out the polar bears that hang around the village around that time of year. I met Art, a videographer, while eating at the Waldo Arms Hotel, a laid-back and comfy lodge in Kaktovik, where journalists from England and tourists from San Francisco were staying. They were all there to view the polar bears.

Fueled by concerns of the melting Arctic and the impact that it’s having on polar bears, Kaktovik has become a popular place to check out the bears. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study found that between 2002 and 2008 on average 25 polar bears could be spotted around Barter Island in September. That makes Kaktovik and ideal place to view the bears, from the safety of a van.  For information on lodging and bear viewing, contact the Waldo Arms Hotel.

Contact Tony Hopfinger at tony(at)alaskadispatch.com.