two bear cultures

 another culture

the bears in the LeConte Creek valley have a culture

they teach and pass down to the next generations:

humans exist, and are annoying,

but are not sources of food or fear,

just like how in big cities

people pass each other and are more background

than actors in the same play, with whom we need to interact,

in my home valley bears regularly forage just by the paved road,

cars slow, stop, move on, smart phones work like mad

to record the bears, who concentrate on eating and exploring:

a wonderful balance of wild animal and domesticated human,

today we hike out of this valley

into another valley, and into another bear culture,

fewer people find their way here

where the road is dirt and rutted, cars a rarity,

we meet a mother bear and two cubs

coming up the old road we hike down,

we don’t fit into their culture, except as potential danger,

so they move back and off the road,

the cubs climb a tree to be safe,

it takes me long minutes fiddling with my camera,

then we resume padding down the way,

one cub quickly hustles down the trunk to get away from us,

we look up, and the other cub

watches us intently from 50 feet up the trunk,

my camera clicks with abandon,

though it’s dark way up there,

and my eyes see better than my lens,

the cub comes down ⅓ of the way,

and pauses as if posing,

even moving enough to let light reveal it more,

the cub is not happy that we are still there,

and makes plaintive complaining noise

that the mother in my wife recognizes as distress,

the photographer in me wants to stay and chronicle more,

but the parent in me elders the photographer,

we leave, and never see this family again today,

we humans need the eldering shock

of how amazing the world without us can be,

a national park, nature conservancy land,

anybody who views their own land as a loan from the future,

help us to enlarge our sense of self,

everyone needs to stand at the foot of a great redwood

and marvel at what the kingdom of plants can express,

today is of bears,

I hope our tomorrows are also of the redwood,

and of any old growth that survives our selfish whims.

by Henry H. Walker

October 2, ‘21