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It was the worst of times, it was the best of times. Amidst doom scrolls and dark headlines, over 2.5 million humans tuned into Fat Bear Week this year--hungry for good news. Allow me to share a bite: Fat Bear Week has crowned a new champion, and it is the sizable and the sensitive 89 Backpack. Backpack’s road to royalty included an early, easy win over the small-but-mighty 610 family, and then two neck-and-neck, nearly deadlocked matches—first against 164 Bucky and then a final match against 910. The race was so close and the adoration for these two bears was so profound that the truest vote was for the organizers to just end it early and call it a tie. By the end of the day, Backpack held his lead, proving to everyone that nice guys can and should finish first. In real life, 89 Backpack evades competition and bear 910 is so secure, she would never need validation. They are each children of former Champions, 435 Holly (Fat Bear Week 2019) and 409 Beadnose (Fat Bear Week 2015 & 2018), respectively. They remain, as always, completely unaware of the internet and our fun little game. Fat Bear Week is an election of epic proportions. We’re judging the bears on fatness, and maybe the first year of Fat Bear Week was truly just about body mass. But, over the years, our understanding of fatness has expanded to also consider strength, resilience, innovation, healing, etc. Some of these things result in visible pounds, but a well-rounded bear can’t always be captured in photos. We vote for the bear that protects her children. We vote for the aging bear that’s finding his way in a new stage of life. We vote for the adoptive moms, the new moms, the seasoned supermoms. We vote for the bears who’ve lost cubs and lost beloveds, who wake up and put one paw in front of the other, despite—no, through—their grief. In my opinion, the biggest reveals of the bracket are never about the bears; they are always about us, the people. Sweet 910 loves her big fat Brooks family, her boarfriends, and herself. Gentle 89 Backpack could demand dominance, but he doesn’t. These are the two bears we brought closest to the finish line this year—not the literal largest, but instead, the softest. What does it say about our community and our values, that the individuals we think are most deserving of a crown are the ones that show the most care to others? It’s a wild world out there, and I mean that for all of us. We are navigating different conditions, different bodies, different lineages. Different gains, different losses. Fat Bear Week reminds us that you don’t have to be the biggest to win it. Every ounce of who you are matters. Some follow Fat Bear Week because it’s a wholesome distraction from the horrors. I follow Fat Bear Week because it teaches us some possible ways through them. How do you guys know so much about the bears? a stranger commented this week on one of my posts. Obsession, I replied. But, when I thought more about it later, I wanted to change my answer to Devotion. What brings me back to Fat Bear Week year after year, what keeps me keeping up with the bears in the cam season, what gets me brow-deep in research is Love, really. A love for the bears, a love for their lives and their stories, and a love for us—the humans—who are bearing (pun intended) witness and finding a mirror to our world through them. Taking a long, loving look at something, that’s how the poet Naomi Shihab Nye once defined devotion. I’m devoted to our kinship—amongst our kind and beyond. I want to look, and look, and love and love, for a long, long time. Thank you for joining me. (This “field note” was originally published on KTOO Public Media, September 30, 2026)
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