“When you imagine your future, do not think that you will be the same then as you are now.” – Sanaya Roman
Loon on Kearney Lake, Algonquin Park photo by me.
When I was in Canada, we had a close encounter with a black bear. Coming out of hibernation and finding very little to eat, some of the bears in Algonquin Park decide that the food that the humans are cooking and leaving around would be a lot more filling than waiting for the blueberries to ripen. We now know that a) they can smell beer through cans (in our neighbor’s campsite) and b) that even rice cakes smell nice when you are starving (in my brother and sister-in-law’s dining tent.)
Yes, I know that the photo above is not a bear. I didn’t stop to take any pictures of it ripping through our dining tent as I carried my 2.5 year old niece to the safety of the van! A park warden arrived shortly thereafter and began shooting rubber bullets at the bear to scare it away. It was not a nice connecting-with-animals experience for any of us – including the bear.
Before I left for Canada I was going through a prolonged and very boring angst-y period about what sort of writing I should be doing and who I was. Lots of signs happened around me showing me the way and I half-heartedly paid attention to them. But that’s the problem with signs and nudges: if you don’t listen to them, they get louder and stronger. Looking up ‘Bear’ in Animal Speak, I found that it is a powerful messenger, linked with myths and stories. Bear, it would seem had a message for me and it really wanted me to pay attention.
While I was in the park I saw loons, beavers, moose, chipmunks, bluejays and a bear. Did I run home and look up all of those creatures to see what messages they had? Nope. Did I listen to the gentle messengers in case they wanted to tell me something? Nope. That poor bear had to get shot in the backside to get my attention. And as much message as Bear had for me, I got a message in the method as well. Starving, it was so desperate for any nourishment that it risked its safety to get it. It was not interested in us at all; it only wanted to eat. It was our fear and our reaction that made the situation turn violent and frightening.
Nourish the wild soul, listen for the messages, pay attention and don’t be afraid of connection with the sacred and the wild. These are lessons I humbly accept from the bear. But I got another one I like a lot too. It’s the one my friend Jo give me when I told her about the bear:”it’s time to come out of your cave!”
RrrroooOOoooooAAAaaaaaRRRrrrrr!
xo
