You think you know your neighbors. When Brian Gordon and Rick Martinez moved into their Monrovia home in 2022, they didn’t quite realize how close to wildlife their new space was, and how attractive their swimming pool would be to non-human guests.
But four years and one deadly wildfire later, the couple have built a following around their Instagram account, @PoolBearLife, and become unofficial ambassadors for “co-thriving,” a movement that emphasizes less human control and more reciprocity between people and wildlife.
“When we bought the house we knew there were bears, because during the inspection we saw bears,” Gordon said. “We had a fear of them the first couple of months.”
Gordon and Martinez’s adventures with Maddie Bear, her cubs, and other forest creatures in the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley mountains are the subject of two recently-released documentaries, “Bears in Hot Tubs” by Claire Musser, and “Wildlife on the Edge II: Bears” from Ecoflix Films and Peter Von Puttkamer.
Both works were featured with Wild Confluence Film’s “Range Rider” in a showcase held Feb. 7 in Glendale.
“Range Rider” tells the story of Daniel Curry, who patrols wild areas on horseback and acts as a buffer between wolves and cattle herds in Washington. That film has also won numerous awards in the film festival circuit.
A three-film showcase documenting San Gabriel Valley interactions with wildlife hopes to spread the message of “co-thriving” with bears and other non-human neighbors held on Feb. 7 in Glendale. (Photo by Job E. Rivera)The buzzword around the films is “co-thriving,” a term Curry coined which Musser defines as “a way of thinking beyond conflict or tolerance toward shared responsibility and long-term care between people and wildlife.”
Musser, executive director of the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project, and Curry, founder of Project GRIPH, are combining his field practice and her research to redefine human-wildlife relationships across the Western United States and beyond.
But first, they looked at how residents in the San Gabriel Valley foothills are learning to live alongside their non-human neighbors. For Gordon and Martinez, it was a matter of connection and balance. And learning from biologists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and conservation groups.
A recent post @poolbearlife discussed the appearance of a bear wearing a collar and what Fish and Wildlife staff learn from that tool, such as data on home ranges, diets and habits. This bear enjoyed a 13-minute dip in the couple’s pool before ambling away.
“While the collar tells the story of research, the footage tells the story of our local bears….a 13-minute pool session, a pool noodle straddle, and a full-body booty-scratch dance at the railing,” Gordon and Martinez wrote. “A collar tells the story of research, a noodle tells the story of fun, and the scratch tells the story of being 100% bear.”
The story of Maddie Bear, whom the couple first met as a cub, is central to “Bears in Hot Tubs.” Musser gave Maddie Bear a co-directing credit for her film, which she said couldn’t be completed until after the Eaton fire of January 2025, when she confirmed Maddie had survived the blaze.
“I set out to tell a story that I feel needed to be told about Maddie’s choices, the decisions that she made, the way that she moved through the space changed everything about the film,” Musser said. “This is completely her story.”
Gordon and Martinez’s camera footage captures Maddie through seasons before the Eaton fire, when she gives birth and tends to two cubs of her own. Both cubs would not survive to adulthood. The days after Maddie lost her second cub, cameras caught her, lying at a favorite spot, chin on paws, watching the sunset for two hours, Gordon said.
Seeing animals as individuals and recognizing their mannerisms help people co-thrive, the filmmakers said. Musser said she struggled to co-thrive with coyotes outside her home until she put up cameras, and learned their habits and personalities.
“It didn’t take much much for me to tweak my human behavior, and we have no issues at all anymore,” Musser said. “It comes out of the conservation community all the time, ‘Animals are voiceless and we need to speak for them. I say no, we don’t. Animals have a voice. They’re showing us what they need all the time. It’s up to us to start paying attention and when we do, that’s when we’re really gonna start to learn to thrive alongside our wild neighbors.”
Musser and Curry propose that wildlife should not have to adapt to human systems, but that humans change to live well within their shared landscapes.
Curry said his years as a range rider in Washington’s rural areas, and spending time with his gray horse, as well as wolves, cows, mountain lions and other wildlife has taught him to be a better human.
The death of Griph, his gray mare, three months ago has also taught him one other lesson.
“I owe that to him, to spread the message of leading with love, especially in this time and age when there’s a lot of divisive things trying to pull us apart. If we can lead with love, that’s very powerful,” Curry said.
Musser’s film is an official selection at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City on Feb. 22, at the Ladyface Mountain Documentary Film Festival in Agoura Hills on Feb. 28, the Golden State Film Festival in Hollywood on March 1 and Wild & Scenic Film Festival On Tour in Arizona on March 28.
“Bears in Hot Tubs” won Awards of Merit from the Impact DOCS Awards on Feb. 2 and Best Shorts Competition in December.
The praise gives everyone involved in the documentaries hope that they can inspire others to join their cause of empathy-driven understanding of wildlife in urban and rural landscapes.
“What I’m trying to do in the stories that I tell is the magic and the stories happen when you talk to the people that are actually living alongside their wild neighbors, these large carnivores,” Musser said. “We’re trying to change how we see the world and show that we can do better.”
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