BEAR!!!
A Muse Mint
On our second day in Denali National Park we saw a grizzly bear. No worries. I felt safe. It was 100 yards away and I had a can of bear spray with a 25-foot range. I looked to see whether there was a money-back guarantee. There wasn’t. Nonetheless I felt perfectly safe because, well because I was on a tour bus with 40 others.
BEAR!!!
We collectively gasped and pressed cameras and/or noses on or through the windows. No one made a sound otherwise the bear would eat us, or so the bus driver told us. We were utterly fascinated by that bear nonchalantly munching on berries.
And that fascinates me about humans. Even the slightest glimpse of wildlife drives us crazy with delight.
We all come from indigenous people who lived on equal or nearly equal terms with the rest of the world. Part of our hearts and spirits yearn for a real relationship with the nonhuman natural world. One of the reasons I live here is because access to the wiid is just down the street.
Humans love the wild, the untamed, the unpredictable danger, and then spend too much time trying to put it all in a box and tame it in the end.