Black Bear

A month or so ago I stated my intention to alter the way I blog and one thing I wanted to get back into that I did for a brief time last year was podcasting. I planned to make that a personal storytime.

And I fully intended to make this post into a podcast, but I'm rusty on the technical parts. I'll get back up to speed for next week, but without further ado . . . 

Black Bear

During a brief moment of insanity after the death of my pet kitty Brady in 1991 (at the age of 17), I attended Vermont Law School to study Environmental Law. I had the idealistic notion that I would work for Greenpeace or maybe Ralph Nader when I graduated, and fight the good fight against The Man. It took me two months to decide that law school wasn’t for me, and neither was the $100,000 I would owe in student loans and the $20,000 annual income I could expect fighting that good fight I blathered about. In short order I would return to New York to pursue a doctorate in Applied Linguistics at New York University, where at least I would be able to obtain a fellowship and rack up only $40,000 of debt. But before my return, I would spend nearly $25,000 on one semester of law school, and learn a frightfully basic lesson that passed me by during childhood.

South Royalton, Vermont is a picturesque New England town that in 1991 didn’t even have a stoplight. The campus of Vermont Law School (no connection to the University of Vermont) was composed of a handful of new buildings sprinkled among turn-of-the-century buildings, setting a tone of contrast. Like Vermonters, the contrast was noticeable and firm in its conviction: neither dramatic and pretentious, nor meek and apologetic. City folk and suburban folk apply to VLS not just for its world-renown environmental law program, but also for its rural atmosphere. It’s the kind of place that helps you get past the human notion that we’re outside of nature—that there’s this divine, glorious thing called nature, and then there’s us, you know, way above it all and in charge.

I mistakenly believed that geography would solve any problems I had: that once positioned where all of nature is respected, and people are working toward the common goal of protecting the environment, I would be in that elusive place we spend our lives searching for—home. But once again I was out of place, just like when I was a child and Brady was the only one who seemed to understand me. Except this time there was no Brady to comfort me.

I had developed the arrogant attitude that my existential plight was unique among humans. I felt the pain of the earth and all of its inhabitants, and if I couldn’t find kin in an environmental law program, I probably didn’t have any kin to speak of. I had to admit that my attempt to find my place had failed. There was also the tiny matter of the financial situation I had created for myself, namely, that my one-semester stint would cost more money than I would make in a year when I graduated.

At VLS, the financial aid people sit you down during your first semester, I think to assess your grip on the reality of your fiscal present and future. Such meetings probably separate the diehards from the weak of conviction, or at least the weak of bank balance. Clearly, I wasn’t a diehard, as not only did I almost plotz when I heard the facts, but said facts made my decision to leave law school a no-brainer. If I had been enjoying law school and its infamous Socratic method, I might have conjured up some passion to remain. But for the first time, I was indifferent to my education, and life’s too short for apathy.

On a brisk November morning, I decided to leave law school. I felt like a failure and a fake and I had to admit that I wasn’t doing well academically for the first time. And I didn’t properly research the ramifications of going to VLS, because if I had, I wouldn’t have been so shocked when I heard about my inevitable debt and low-paying job prospects. I had no one to blame but myself, and was wallowing in lakes of self-hatred. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have made such a colossal blunder?  

Enter Black Bear

Crestfallen, I schlepped my sorry self from my minuscule apartment, across the Village Green toward the coffee shop. No, it wasn’t a Starbucks; it was an old-fashioned, apple-pie under the glass, only one kind of coffee, coffee shop. I believe it was even run by a woman named Madge, who had spent almost two decades watching law students come and go. As is often the case with rural areas that academic institutions have chosen as their homes, the town’s service establishments are run mostly by locals, who coexist somewhat tensely with academic folk. No other moment was as illustrative of that tension than this particular morning.

When I stepped onto the narrow parking strip between the Village Green and the coffee shop, I stopped in my tracks to avoid being leveled by a speeding, mud-caked, vintage Saab with a Grateful Dead dancing bears sticker on it. In a stroke of the surreal, my heart beat frantically as my eye was yanked from the cheery, colorful bears on the sticker, to a mammoth black bear, tethered to the back of a white pickup truck, and held down with chicken wire.

He was bleeding from several bullet wounds, and visibly in excruciating pain. He was groaning and whimpering, and his eyes spoke of grave injustice. I was instantly nauseated when the driver of the truck and his accomplice emerged from the truck to greet a half dozen locals who had gathered to admire—not the bear—but the fact that the men had shot and caught him. They chuckled and smiled as the magnificent creature wailed and showed his teeth.

A group of law school students walked far out of their way to avoid the sight. And then the whole lot of backslapping, ecstatic locals entered the coffee shop, as the once-mighty bear lie writhing in pain. I recall deciding not to vomit, as the moment wasn’t about me. If I could have shot the poor bear on the spot, I would have. Or at least I say I would have. But all I had was, well, nothing but my energy and my intention that the bear forgive us all and make the most peaceful transition possible to wherever he was going. Even to nothingness, as that would have been an improvement over his current situation.

I walked around the truck to get a good look at the bear and I approached his face. I hadn’t yet perfected the art of not getting hysterical when I saw an injured animal, so I was quite a sight, I’m sure. Heaving and sobbing, I spoke to him. With my usual flair for nomenclature, I called him Black Bear. I begged for his forgiveness and I tried to explain that men are so fearful that they might not be as significant as they have deluded themselves into thinking, that they will do all kinds of irrational things and call those things proof that they are indeed king of the hill. Like sneaking up on unsuspecting creatures and shooting them from behind, for instance. Somehow men have convinced themselves that that is a worthy activity, and they even have the gall to call it sport, as if it’s a fair game played on equal footing. Or as if the other team is even aware the game is being played and has agreed to participate. That’s not sport. That’s cowardice.

And these fearful men say they’re helping the population, and that many animals would die from starvation if it weren’t for their valiant efforts. Meanwhile, their targets aren’t starving or ill creatures at all; they aim for the big, healthy creatures who might breed a new generation of hardy animals.

I really did say all of this. And then, in a whisper and continuously disrupted by blubbering, I sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to the majestic Black Bear. I stared into his eyes while envisioning him breaking free from the prison the men made of the truck, and the prison the men made of his now mortally-wounded body. I then thanked Black Bear for giving me the gift of perspective. I was having a self-indulgent day, and I discovered that there’s no better cure for that kind of depression than being with someone else whose agony makes yours look insignificant, if not embarrassingly ludicrous.

I transformed my pain into pure love and gratitude and showered Black Bear with it. And I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point he died, eyes wide open and pointed in my direction. I closed them and lay a hand on his face and then on his gigantic paw, and felt him with me as I wandered into the woods, imagining I was escorting him back to his home.

Comments

[Shannon]

Thanks for this, Mary. It broke my heart in the best way possible.

[Tina Clark]

Thank you for this beautiful essay. I was marginally keeping it together as I read,until I got to the part where you sang to him. Sad and wonderful.

[Eileen]

I was enjoying the self-indulgent opening to this blog post. Really made the sad ending hit harder.

[Olivia]

Ditto Tina.

Your heart is as pure as Black Bear's.

My hope is that one day those closed-hearted locals will experience the kind of open-hearted, transforming love you felt for that magnificent creature. Thank you for sending him on his way in peace.

[philip steir]

There is something so horrible about this aspect of human behavior. Feeling joy or pleasure while someone else is suffering from an action you've (they) have done to the other. There is something deep and tragic here that I have a terrible time trying to articulate. It comes like a flash of lightning into my brain and leaves before my mind can attach a word to it. It feels like a word that would possibly describe when humans do not respect the dignity and importance of someone else's subjectivity. It's not empathy.. because there is a bit of anger wrapped up in it as well. Its not injustice either ...although it feels similar to both. I cannot explain it and I've struggled all my life to find this word. But maybe I never will and maybe it's unimportant that I find the correct word. Although like yourself I'm interested in the use of language and how it shapes everything we do.
I experienced this feeling for the first time when I saw teenage boys kicking a lonely injured stray dog when I was about 8. Mind you...this feeling only lasts a 10th of a second and vanishes into whatever normal anger or sadness that is existing in the present moment. I felt it again when I saw for the first time...baby seals being clubbed on the TV news when I was around 10.
Your wanting to vomit I can empathize with that.
And in all of this...
I think it's appropriate that we drop the great from our describing ourselves as "great apes". We humans might be apes...hairless for sure... but not great.
Mary as you always do...you've inspired me to post on my blog a personal story about my first experience with human cruelty towards animals.

Thanks....

[Su Neuhauser]

So, .let me ge this straight, first you plotzed and then you schlepped? It is hard to see humor in such tragedy, but I managed to, so thanks for this story. In Wisconsin the black bears are chased by dogs all summer and then hunted over a one month period in the fall in every conceivable way known to man except for the atalatl ( which even the neanderthals in the Conservation Congress would not approve). My heart goes aches and cries out for the suffering these men are legally allowed to participate in as part of the annual blood letting. Anything about bears is of interest. Please share with your readers this e-mail address:
BIG@centurytel.net. BIG is the acronym for Bear Interest Group. It is a small grass roots org. of seven years trying to fight the hunting lobby here.

[Mike Grieco]

From the [Savagery of Man], to Pure Love of a Human!

Beautiful Mary, thank you for showering Black Bear with the best of human kindness, and helping him in his journey to peace - safe from the evils that men do.

**Love & Light** for the victims of a human society...