Riding my bike on a dirt road in Montana, I was being mindful of the original inhabitants of this relatively intact stretch of forest. I pedaled slowly, taking in the energy and beauty of the land. A gentle breeze was blowing in the treetops and they swayed to the rhythm of the wind.
I was happy beyond belief. Silently, I announced myself to the forest inhabitants. They had been there long before the onslaught of recent migrants and predated the settlers from Europe by many thousands of years.
I silently communicated my benevolence to the Grizzly Bear Nation, to the last of these wild bears. “I love you,” I told them. “And I ask for permission to enter your home range and go for a little bike ride. But I do not have to ride my bike here,” I added, “I can go on a paved road and anywhere else— I know you only have a sliver of your former habitat left.” I have had many happy encounters with wild bears and often recall them in my heart.
A rustling in the bushes next to the road I was slowly cruising along caught my heightened attention. Spontaneously, right from my heart, I said out loud: “Whoever you are, dear one, please show yourself to me. There’s no reason to be afraid of me. This is your home and I respect it.” I had barely uttered the last syllable, when the head of a bear popped up right next to me. He stood up on his hind legs to get a better look at me. I stopped dead in my tracks. What a beautiful bear! What a beautiful soul. “I love you!” I exclaimed. “Thank you for being here with us on this earth. You are important and you matter.” My heart was beating with love for this creature who had to be so careful in his own home because most humans are afraid and carry weapons that we use at the least provocation. If a bear shows up when we intrude on their home territory, we often kill them or, at the very least, assault them with bear spray.
I am a firm believer in and practitioner of intuition. Why practice blanket fears at any given moment when we have our wonderful intuition to tell us when something is wrong? Why not be awake, aware and conscious of our surroundings when we are the wilderness?
In this case, my intuition wasn’t telling me that anything was wrong, but that, in fact, this was how it was supposed to be, that we were supposed to coexist together in a fearless and loving way. There was no reason to panic or behave irrationally just because there was a bear right next to me. Instead, I kept exuding my love for this animal. And so the bear did not have to defend himself from me. In all my remaining years on this planet, I will never forget the look he gave me. Such an intelligent gaze, so full of brightness and with a twinkle that lit up the forest. It was almost like he was playing with me. He had finally found someone who was not running away from him or threatening him. He had met his equal in me, and I was equally thrilled to meet him. In a way, we both threw what our mothers had told us overboard: namely, to run, panic and be afraid of each other. We did the exact opposite, we made contact with each other to better understand one another. “Bear, this is what a bear truly is,” I thought gleefully. “Woman,” he seemed to think, “this is what a true woman is like.” I grinned from ear to ear and felt like he did the same. “You are sacred and this is a sacred moment in time,” I told him. Sometimes called the “doctors of the forest,” bears are powerful, essential and considered sacred in many Indigenous communities.
There’s no reason to fear bears unnecessarily. In fact, I practice being fearless, empty and loving whenever I enter a forest or other territory where wild ones reside. I do not throw fear at the animals there, and I do not force any encounters, meetings or photo ops. I do not bait them or see them as an object. I am mindful of the fact that they do not have much space left to roam anymore. It must be very stressful to have to hide from us humans in their own homes. It must be sad that they cannot meet us on equal terms, with curiosity, mutual understanding and respect for each other. It must be very difficult when the three food sources that nourish them the most in the fall — whitebark pines, salmon and huckleberries — are being gradually, and sometimes not so gradually, taken away from them, through drought, dams, the introduction of nonnative species, human encroachment, overfishing and overharvesting, to name a few.
Yet this particular wild bear harbored no grudges against anybody. He was just doing what bears do. He checked me out with his beady eyes, full of kindness and curiosity. Tears welled up in my eyes in return: “I will do whatever I can for you. I will tell your story. I love you!” Our encounter did not last long. I did not want him to get habituated to humans and be unable to discern who was benevolent toward the Bear Nation from who was armed and ready to “get his/her bear.” Or who simply acted from fear towards anybody wild and had been taught that only a preemptive strike against a wild animal when encountered in the wild is the right and only good response. I did not take any pictures of him. The moment was too sacred to exploit. I pedaled on, all the while blessing his presence, talking to him, bidding him goodbye.
My heart continued to sing from the meeting with the bear. I lifted my gaze up to the trees that were still swaying in the wind. Today was a good day to be happy. Today was a day filled with joy. Today was a day to be love incarnate. Every day I choose love.