I’ve never killed a bear, like most people. Like most people have never killed even lettuce. It’s a threshold I just haven’t crossed. I’m surprised, though, to think I’d like to. Bears have always been friends to me, figuratively, as an adult - fellow foragers - but as a child, very literally. I grew up on a farm that I was free to toddle around on, and in those sweet, stretchy, years between learning to walk and having to go to school, I spent my time in the far corner of the upper field, playing house in the thicket beneath the shagbark trees, with a family of imaginary bears. According to family lore, I told everyone they were multi-colored, which is how my mind’s eye still sees them, as shifting, welcoming hues in the brush, and I called them “ the thranka bears”, pronounced brusquely, as “trnka”. I don’t know where this word came from and spelling is debatable since I hadn’t yet learned to write, but I would say it as surely as any other word I knew - “Trnka”. I didn’t ever think to look this word up, because I thought I’d imagined it, like the bears, until today.
Trnka
“an ancient goddess, depicted in triple form, associated with entrance-ways, and the knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants.”
“a person who lives by a blackthorn bush.”
“clear of dirt, clean of shame or guilt, purified”
My bridled, adult, mind runs wilder with this than even my young mustang mind would have. I’m dying to know who I was talking to up there. They were friends, that much I know, and all bears since then, the same. I like to eat bears, now, though, is the thing. I like to massage their fat into my skin, which sounds, I know, unfriendly. It started with a bite of gifted stew - I took, timidly, like my first mouthful of psilocybin, thinking my body might reject the flesh of something, like the mushroom, so close to kin. To my surprise, it swallowed it gladly and I sensed it taking things it needed, like fearlessness, and sense of smell - the doctrine of signatures at work inside me. The same when I stirred its rendered fat with beeswax and pine resin and slathered it over my parched, winter body. My skin drank it in cleanly, pure absorption like it was an analog for my own cells and I was instantly quenched. No translation was needed - just one of those good talks with that friend who gets you.
And there’s the rub with eating any animal. I’ve had to learn to kill and eat my friends without skewing them into enemies first to make the killing easier, or else it gets ugly - extractive - like when we skew gifts into resources, wants into needs. It seems that bears give hunters of all cultures the hardest time of any animal, many choosing not to hunt them at all, touting reverence. Anyone who’s stalked a deer or held a gasping trout knows reverence, and this doesn’t stop us from going back for more. I think with bears it’s just plain old fear of facing death because they’re more than friends, they’re us - just beyond some open door. When you pull their skin off, there you are, gaunt, on the gurney, and this doesn’t tend to make the mouth water. So, we’ll see, if I do ever kill a bear, if it feels like a murder-suicide, or if it feels like brushing aside a boundary that used to feel like a wall.
I think about bears most often, now, in the middle of winter, even though it’s the least likely time to see one. I’ve got a thing for hibernation. It was late June, however, when I was presented with the only thought I’ve been able to have about bears ever since. I was walking with a friend through hemlock woods, collecting Reishi mushrooms. The ferns smelled like apricots, the blackflies were blooming, the reishi were gleaming red beacons, you know, a perfect, green day. I pointed out that all of the older stumps had been pummelled by bears pawing for grubs. The shredded pulp already being swallowed by the spongey ground, easy as bear fat sinking into my skin.
“Why are there bears?” he asked.
“Why are there bears, here?” I returned.
“No, just, why are there bears?”
It’s become, for me, one of those questions that will never be answered but is thought about every day, anew. The only way I could see to approach it, was with a poem. I wrote this draft the next day, and have written a million mental drafts since. Mostly, it’s a practice of thinking about bears, in constant question form.
Why Are There Bears?
Why are there bears?
So that my mind isn’t the biggest thing in the forest
and there are shadows darker than my grief.
So the old cherry gets pruned
by the weight of climbing cubs
just in time to let light down to the new pits sprouting.
To remind us we have brothers here.
So that mothers get to know the real quiet of winter
tucked into the ground
with nothing to do but sleep the sleep all mothers need
and lie still and warm with her young.
To tell us that silence can be big.
To remind us that another name for blueberry is “the gift”
and to feast the second it’s ripe.
To show us ourselves
with thicker skins
and softer steps.
If you find yourself in the same room as bear fat, use it liberally.
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