In Marley's Memory, He Chooses Survival

In the same way that Orsted once had precious life itself pulled from his protective grasp, hearing his story may at first make you want to hold your breath, then elicit a gasp, and then inhale the amorphous thing he calls gratitude. Over a few years now, I’ve been watching Orsted, delighting in witnessing his voyage of personal meaning while simultaneously being apprehensive about visiting with him about the source of his sorrow.

“You really ought to have a conversation with Brad,” our mutual friend, the retired Forest Service whitebark pine tree researcher and backcountry recreation enthusiast Jesse Logan has said, his own voice cracking in pondering the debilitating, near-fatal headspace Orsted had visited before finding a course back to light.

Orsted’s métier is photography and filmmaking, specifically making documentaries that explore the fragility of nature and the opportunity each of us has to help defend it.  The new short documentary he co-directed, The Beast of Our Time: Grizzly Bears and Climate Change, has won rave reviews and it features an all-star cast of conservation-minded voices with Paradise Valley ties—Doug Peacock, Jeff Bridges, Terry Tempest Williams, Rick Bass and it even features music by Little Feat co-founder Bill Payne.

This artistic triumph and drama it conveys, however, doesn’t come close to rivaling the arc of Orsted’s own life.  Of Orsted's new book, Through the Wilderness: My Journey of Redemption and Healing in the American Wild, Rick Bass says, "The spirit in this book is enormous. A profound, troubling, soul-shattering book by a great artist, great spirit, great being. An unshakable, beautiful book."  Adds Paradise Valley author, grizzly bear advocate and Greet Beret Doug Peacock, whose own books have served as guideposts for Orsted, "Brad's story is the classic American tale of redemption. He has written bravely." You can read an adapted excerpt by clicking here.

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The first thing you need to know about Brad Orsted is that he was raised a flatlander.  Born "a Hawkeye," as he says,  in Des Moines, Iowa,  he moved to Goshen, Indiana with his mother as a baby after his parents divorced. He grew up a Midwestern child of the 70’s, he notes, eating hotdogs and government Food Stamp cheese. “That classic poster of Farrah Fawcett in her red one-piece swimsuit graced my bedroom wall, and my heroes were Muhammed Ali, Bruce Lee and Gene Simmons,” he explains. “ My goals were to ride my bike, fish every day, and join the KISS Army when I grew up.”

As Orsted entered young adulthood, he transplanted himself in Colorado where he became a trout bum and enjoyed it so much he remained in the state well into his 30s.  “Eventually, I moved to Michigan at age 36, marrying, settling down and having a baby girl, Marley, in 2009. My life was singularly and spectacularly normal until July 14^th, 2010.”  

Things were good, but that was the day, he shares, when Marley went to his mother’s house for her first overnight visit.

“The next day—in circumstances that have never been completely clear—Marley died,” Orsted says. “In the defining moment of my life, my little girl left our house a healthy toddler and came home in a hand-painted urn.”

In the wake of a police and coroner’s investigation, it is believed that Orsted’s mother suffered an epileptic seizure and collapsed on top of her granddaughter, accidentally smothering her to death. It was a tragedy that resulted in Orsted being estranged from his mother, also leaving Orsted and his wife shattered. Orsted says the mental anguish became overwhelming and he believed there was only one option for relief, all the while he resorted to alcohol and then sedatives and anti-depressants to dull feelings of guilt and regret.  

The more that he attempted to go to sleep at night praying that he might go back in time and alter the river current of past events by a day, hours, minutes, a few seconds even, the more he spiraled. 

“As I charged mindlessly through the verdure, I thought I spotted a distant elk in a sea of silvery-green sage. Then what turned out to be a grizzly bear casually lifted its head. It huffed a few times and simply disappeared, but it changed the trajectory of my life,” he said, noting that jolts of adrenalin were like a strange form of spiritual CPR. “ In that moment, I realized I didn’t want to die and be shit out somewhere beautiful anymore. I didn’t want to die at all – I just didn’t know how to live.”

When one loses a child, he explains, there is no looking back and achieving "closure," no liberation to be had without twitching with tinges when coming upon old photographs or being haunted by them, but there are ways to cope, that allow memories to not have to be blurred to be felt.  One of his rituals is rising to greet the sun and offering up a prayer to Marley at the start of every new day; that she might join him, as if carried in his backpack and that her ever presence isn't a yoke but buoyancy.

Orsted used to say that grizzly bears saved his life. “However, my dear friend and poet, CMarie Fuhrman, sums it up better. She suggested that ‘grizzly bears didn't save my life, that I saved my life: grizzly bears just showed me why.’ I like that explanation better.” His wildlife advocacy is a form of pay back, he says.

Not long ago, I finally caught up with Orsted who is writing a memoir (itself worthy of a movie adaptation) and this summer, every day in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, he heads out taking photographs and wrapping up a couple of new video projects. 

TODD WILKINSON: You understand the power of individual moments because your life has been shaped by them. At this one, being here in Greater Yellowstone [GYE] and the Northern Rockies, seeing what's happening, the frenetic set against the eternal, what's most important to you? What's capturing your eye not from a specific project perspective but more largely?

BRADLEY ORSTED: Having lived and worked as a wildlife filmmaker/photographer in the GYE for almost a decade now, one of the most alarming things I see is how fast things are changing in our wild spaces—especially national parks. Social media was just getting big in 2012 when I started photographing in Yellowstone. There was a dedicated group of photographers/filmmakers and a few regulars who showed up from time to time. Then wildlife photography blew up on social media, and every year since, the number of long lenses in Yellowstone seems to double and triple. 

TW: That’s the nature of “the sharing media” but it’s exacting a cost that it’s architects probably never imagined—that is, if they’re plugged into the impacts it is having on wild places by steering large numbers of people to places they might not otherwise know about.

ORSTED: I'm fully aware that when I post a close-up image of a wolf or a grizzly bear on my Instagram account, I'm part of the problem these days, attracting more attention, ipso facto more pressure, to the place I hold so dear and sacred. Where's the line between appreciation, and loving a park to death? I guess we'll find out when the infrastructure of our national parks collapses, and all of the animals finally run for the hills. 

TW: In terms of where you are situated these days, where is home and why is it a good place to be?

ORSTED: I've always been slightly nomadic, but Montana is home these days. Most of my work revolves around grizzly bear conservation/education and running wilderness therapy programs, so Paradise Valley, Montana is the perfect area for me. We've got two mountain ranges (Gallatins and Absarokas) with the Yellowstone River coursing like an artery through the valley in between them. Just to the north is the youngest rugged stand-alone range—the Crazy Mountains. There's a lot of magic, mystery, and healing within view of my picnic table. The geologic history and the human relationship to it is so relatively recent here in Montana — sometimes sticking right out of the ground or hidden in plain sight. The land in Montana feels more alive than the tired and overworked cornfields of my Indiana youth.  So, Montana is home — for now. 

TW: Your friend Doug Peacock turned to nature as a transformational refuge where his escape into wild places inhabited by grizzly bears enabled him to start healing from the trauma he experienced as a Green Beret medic in Vietnam. Have you and Peacock talked much about what you share in common—seeking solace in the backcountry of the Northern Rockies?

ORSTED: Doug and I became pals when Jesse Logan introduced us while fishing on a rainy May afternoon along the Yellowstone River. After that day, Doug invited me up to his house to sip French wine, as we talked life, grizzlies and the wild. What I found during that visit, and ever since, wasn’t the brash renegade of Hayduke lore, but a thoughtful, deeply insightful and compassionate human. We spoke of our traumas, and it was one of the first times I felt someone deeply connect to my tragedy without an ounce of sentimentality. Seated across from Doug at his kitchen table, I could see my pain in his eyes. We shared some time in reverence and acknowledgement of our journeys. I also told Doug of my new findings, spending three hundred days a year immersed in Yellowstone with wolves and grizzlies. Spreading out maps of Yellowstone, he cheered me on and gave me a list of places to go, things to look for and what to document on camera. I was learning both healing in the wild, and grizzly bear conservation at the feet of the master. 

TW:  How has the relationship evolved?

ORSTED: Doug and I don’t really speak about our tragedies to each other anymore. We don’t have to. But it’s not that toxic macho masculinity bullshit where men hold everything in, I’ve seen enough of that for multiple lifetimes; quite the contrary, we hug and tell each other we love each other. It’s just that our spirits already recognize that part of each other. We know the words that don’t need to be spoken anymore. Instead, we take that energy into our conservation work to make sure our grandchildren will be able to co-exist with grizzlies too. Doug once said, “The best cure for the metaphysical icky poos is to live consciously and seek out beauty every day.” Solid advice. 

TW: Many people make contact with public lands but may have only superficial relationships with wild country. They might hike or mountain bike a trail, ski off-piste or raft a river. For you, what is the way to go deep and allow it to become part of your "being"?

ORSTED: I’m not sure that we really can have anything more than a superficial relationship with wilderness anymore —what’s left of it. Few of us spend enough time in wild country to notice the creek shifted last week and the muskrat den washed away. We aren’t there frequently enough to notice the subtle natural changes, and for me, that’s when you are in harmony with an area. These days I’m more into getting to know smaller areas more intimately. Maybe I’m getting older. 

TW: You speak openly of the importance of your sobriety and how it has coincided with your understanding of nature. In a recent episode of your podcast Taking it Outside, which readers can hear by clicking here, you are remarkably candid about your struggles and even going through a divorce and adopting nature as a prescription rather than taking meds.

ORSTED: I got sober in September of 2018—around the time I tried to find and film every day some orphaned grizzly bear cubs that—unbeknownst to me –the state killed them in October 2018. That winter, as I fought to stay sober, I spent nearly every day tracking mountain lions and writing the draft of my book. Both experiences gave me the full-on immersion into nature that I needed to battle my demons. This time I was going to choose where I made my final stand to fight for my life. Both experiences forced me to focus, so I was able to notice the day-to-day subtleties in the wild. Tracking mountain lions was completely exhausting— exactly what my broken soul needed. Working the same game trails for days, weeks, and months, following the same individual lions on a nearly weekly basis, and I began to feel more comfortable in nature than at home. That, for me, is when it melts into your being. Like Gary Snyder says, “Nature isn’t a place we visit – it’s home.”

TW: What has the observation required of impactful photography/videography taught you?

ORSTED:  Patience, endurance and perspective. 

There’s no huge secret to wildlife photography/videography — you just go day after day after day and be prepared to wait. That being said, if you’re not a bit of a masochist with a sincere passion for it, the grind will break you down. A lot of days start at 3am with wheels up, and I don’t lay my head down at night until 11pm. Try that for 30 or 45 days straight. You have to love it, or you will hate it. When people say they would love to be a wildlife photographer, I ask them if they can keep that schedule subsisting on Cheez-Its, Red Bulls, peanut M&M’s and beef jerky while sitting in a cramped blind freezing for 10 hours a day and going to the bathroom in a Gatorade bottle? Glamorous, huh? But when the magic happens and you get the image or footage it’s enchanting, and you forget about all the sore knees, frozen fingers and bad diet. 

TW: I know for you there’s also a sort of transcendental dimension, yes?

ORSTED: Wildlife photography and videography have taught me a lot about perspective and the blurred lines between life and art. In wildlife photography, we’re always looking for that trifecta of species, light and background. I’ve noticed while photographing and filming, that moving even 20 or 30 feet can really change your image. A slight shift in perspective can have a major change on the imagery. The same is true in life. Big problems indoors usually seem more manageable outdoors with some fresh air and a brisk walk.  

TW: Grizzlies figure prominently in your work. Your interaction with those orphaned wild bears positioned you perfectly to ponder and creatively work on the film that is really the subject of this interview. Tell our readers what they need to know about what happened that left them orphaned?

ORSTED: In 2015, Casey Anderson and I were filming grizzlies for his production company, VisionHawk, and got to know a female with coy (cubs of the year) as one of the resident bear families in the mountains above Paradise Valley. This young mother hung out on the fringes and seemed very nervous with her tiny cubs in tow. She would frequently stand up to get a better look around, in case there was a threat to her cubs nearby. 

Winter came early and cold with a lot of snow that year as the bears moved towards their dens. Then we heard that our worst fears every fall had come true – that a female grizzly bear mother with coy had been shot by an elk hunter in the area when she stood up to get a better view. She had obviously sensed something wasn’t right and was shot dead in front of her cubs for a non-aggressive move. The state did a perfunctory investigation and left the mother where she lay with her cubs refusing to leave their dead mother’s side. Temperatures were already subzero at night and landscape had turned into a frozen, unforgiving mountainous death zone. We were pretty sure we knew this grizzly family and our hearts broke thinking of her cubs dying of starvation and exposure next to their frozen mother. Yet another senseless tragedy. 

TW: But the story was really only getting started….

ORSTED: In the summer of 2016, Casey and I were filming in Africa when we got a text from another crew member back in Montana that there were two yearling grizzly bear cubs out all by themselves, which is extremely rare. We huddled in the Okavango under a dim light next to the only sketchy wifi as a few images came in of two little, seemingly orphaned, grizzly bear cubs. One light, one darker, and both looking pretty healthy. Could this really be them, we wondered? Could they have survived a brutal Montana winter all by themselves and made it back to where their mother had showed them to find food? Did they really make it through that dreadful ordeal together?

TW: With the death of Marley, did you feel, in any way, orphaned, and what advice would you give to other parents trying to cope?

ORSTED: I essentially lost my mom the same day I lost my daughter. Many days after that I felt like an orphan in the wild. As a wildlife filmmaker/photographer, I’ve seen a lot of animals suffer and die. I’ve seen elk calves swept away from their mother while trying to cross the raging Gardner River. I watched her snort, stomp and paw the ground on the other side where her baby should be coming out of the river, but I could see the little calf’s head go under water for the last time thirty yards downstream already. Mom threw her head, pacing in fear and frustration on the far bank – I knew her pain immediately, and began to cry for us both. She took one more hard look at the river, let out an agonizing bleat, stomped the ground and then stood silently. I watched her closely. There seemed to be a moment where she instinctually knew her baby was gone forever. With one more exaggerated head toss, she reluctantly turned, and rejoined the herd. I sat there for hours letting it all sink in before reluctantly rejoining my own herd. 

TW: That’s a powerful metaphor. How are you doing?

ORSTED: There really is no advice for a parent who has lost a child. It’s a wound that will never heal. I can only speak to what worked and what didn’t work for me. First, I would say, if you had any issues with alcohol before your tragedy, stop now. Don’t do what I did. Secondly, try to get outside as much as possible. 

TW: And, following that advice, you have experienced the humbling healing power of wilderness, yes?

ORSTED: Bumbling around out on a landscape at slow speed where I wasn’t at the top of the food chain is what worked best for me. I was terrified of grizzlies when we moved to Yellowstone in 2012. My fear quickly became respect as I learned more about the great bear from being in the sanctuary of grizzly country. My entire being had become stunned and numbed into a daily looping hell of seeing visions of Marley everywhere I went and feeling like it was all my fault. The gift of the wild, and especially grizzly country is a required presence of mind and spirit. I needed a place where my thoughts couldn’t loop or vacillate between the painful past and the anxious future. 

TW: Learning to be totally present, is that what happened?

ORSTED: Grizzly country is no place to mentally dawdle in the doldrums and the woe-is-me art of self-annihilation. It wasn’t until I made that connection in the wild did I finally realize there was love all around me — I was just too shattered to see it. If I was an orphan, the wild had adopted me and loved me back with some hard earned and well-remembered lessons. I think that love is there for anyone who’s willing to explore their relationship with nature. I also think mother nature holds a special place in her nurturing, wild heart for those of us who have lost children.

TW: What was the genesis of your film with Save the Yellowstone Grizzly (The Beast of Our Time: Grizzly Bears and Climate Change) and what kind of reception has it attracted so far?

ORSTED: After we made our film about the orphans, The Orphans of Grizzly Valley and the state of Montana killed both of them before we could even get the film into post-production, we were obviously heart-broken and quite frankly really pissed off. Those two female grizzlies deserved far better than death. 

TW: Meanwhile and around the same time, the federal government and states were signing off on the delisting of Greater Yellowstone grizzlies, saying the population was recovered.  Wyoming was ready to stage the first trophy sport hunt of grizzlies in nearly half a century. Is this when you got together with Doug Peacock and his influential friends?

ORSTED: Well, if you know Doug Peacock you know passivity and grizzly bear conservation don’t see eye to eye in his book. Doug is a man of action. So, he and Livingston resident Dan Sullivan raised enough money with Patagonia to do a larger film about grizzly bears and climate change — which in essence really encompasses Doug’s half century body of work to save grizzlies. In the film, Doug and Terry Tempest Williams share a breakfast conversation, Rick Bass pleads for connectivity, and a multi-generational ranching family who knew the orphans well shine a beacon of hope on how co-existence can work. Jeff Bridges quotes Edward Abbey to open the film and narrates over an original score by Little Feat co-founder, Bill Payne. When you try to save grizzly bears, the coolest people want to pitch in. I was honored Doug would trust me to help direct and produce his vision for a better future. The film is part documentary, part love story. 

TW: The response has been overwhelmingly positive. For those who haven’t seen it, where can they go to find it?

ORSTED: It’s gratifying that The Beast of Our Time: Grizzly Bears and Climate Change has met with a warm reception so far. We are just getting started in the festival circuit and planning a road show with the film. The ultimate goal was to get this out as an educational piece to show how intertwined the grizzlies’ fate and ours really are, and work as communities to find solutions as grizzlies try to spread out and reconnect. The changes that will be wrought by climate change are likely to negatively effect habitat for all of us. We will be doing an online public release of the film scheduled for the first week in August. I’ll be posting/sharing to my Instagram/Facebook, (@Brad_Orsted and Brad Orsted Photograhy) and people can go to SavetheYellowstoneGrizzly.org to stay current on the film and all things grizzly. 

TW: Creative projects have the potential to change us.  How did this visual work continue the shift going on in you?

ORSTED: As I mentioned, I started following the orphaned young grizzlies for our film while getting sober in September of 2018. They were my therapy and AA meetings. Later I found out the state killed the first orphan on my 30-day sobriety anniversary and the bear’s sister a few weeks later. I felt like everything small, innocent and beautiful that I cared about died tragically. I convinced myself that maybe I was cursed. It triggered old feelings of sadness and addiction, but I fought through it for the first time, and started winning. 

TW: Share one of the victories.

ORSTED: Standing in Doug’s [Peacock’s] kitchen in September of 2020 with a full camera crew filming Doug and Terry Tempest Williams discussing love and loss just after the 10-year anniversary of losing Marley – it hit me how much had come full circle in my life. 

TW: For those of us who admire your work, what’s most striking to me are the reasons you’ve embraced to still have hope.

ORSTED: My life had been bleak without Marley. I saw no purpose in life and had no reason to live. Like my psychotherapist and many other health care professionals along the way had told me, my prognosis was not very good. Working with Doug and everyone at Save the Yellowstone Grizzly helped me get my feet back under me and gave me purpose again. The love and compassion our team shares for our work, grizzlies, the wild, and each other gives me hope for both humans and grizzlies. Only love heals a love wound. 

TW: Where are you headed, both literally and figuratively now?

ORSTED: As I mentioned earlier, for now Montana is my home. Today I was writing from a picnic table near the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley. My memoir about all of these experiences: tragedy, trauma, addiction and redemption in the wild is completed. My agent, Sam Hiyate, is shopping for the right publisher. Besides the upcoming road show for The Beast of Our Time, book and film, I have a podcast about my journey called, Take It Outside. My next film project is already in pre-production, and I have a few speaking engagements coming up. I stay pretty busy – I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

TW: You’re also helping to give other people a reason to live and or change their lives.

ORSTED: In addition to my work behind cameras, I’m a Certified Peer Support Specialist and we are in the process of starting an addictions recovery ranch here in Montana with a strong emphasis on nature therapy – the only medicine that worked for me. I’m so excited to build an outdoor curriculum around the peace and healing in nature I’ve seen work not only in myself, but with so many others. My goal is to help others struggling so they don’t have to make that tortuous, uphill slog through the darkness that I did—at least not alone. 

TW: When you look ahead, what do you see?

ORSTED: My future is wide open at this point. I honestly feel like I was reborn in the wild and am now a wide-eyed kid again. Some days I still just want to ride my bike, fish and join the KISS Army. It’s such a vast horizon, so full of adventure in every direction. Sobriety gave me the clarity and courage to put unhealthy relationships behind me, so now I’m sober and single with no attachments and few obligations for the first time in my adult life. It’s exhilarating and terrifying at the same time – much like grizzly country some days. 

I’ll continue to write, photograph, make films that hopefully make a difference, and build our recovery ranch from the ground up. I’ve reduced my life to six simple things that I do almost every summer day. Pray, workout, work, write, eat tacos and fish. With five of them done for today, and backlit tail-heavy salmon flies careening down the Yellowstone River like tipsy commuters, I’ll fish the river until the sun goes down on Montana and then call it another good day to be alive in the wild. 

EDITOR'S END NOTE: A short trailer forThe Beast of Our Time: Climate Change and Grizzly Bears can be viewed below. The film has won widespread praise.  Pictured below is Orsted with an advance copy of his new book. Look for an excerpt to appear in MoJo.

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