While walking down a dirt road with my friend Melissa we were suddenly stopped mid-sentence, mesmerized by the appearance of the a black bear. It was the first I'd ever seen outside of my dreams, where I have seen them most of my life. It was a fair distance away, but with its excellent hearing and sense of smell it took notice of us and stopped to look while we stopped to gawk at it. After a few moments of watching each other the bear carried on through the field and disappeared into the woods.
The experience was terrifying and amazing. I have been afraid of bears since I was a child and we lived in a farmhouse near Leroy, Ohio, where many bears began making their return migration after several decades, maybe centuries, of not being present in that area. Now I live in upstate New York and since 2009 when I first moved here I knew there were black bears that moved though the area every spring. People would casually say, "Yeah, I saw a bear the other day", and because everyone was very accepting of the presence of the bears I began to become less afraid of them. I never had an encounter of my own for the following two years, until now.
For the past few nights walking to my tent in the dark has been a frightening experience. I was afraid I'd startle any potential bears chilling out in the woods and they'd become aggressive and defensive. Last night I was cat sitting (a whole separate story) and I couldn't sleep well, partially due to the cats, and partially because I was not in my tent, laying on the ground, in the woods (with the bears).
Today I decided to change my office computer background to a picture of a black bear and I am reading all of the information I can about black bears. I'm hoping to integrate this experience since I've been dreaming of bears since I was a child living in Ohio, terrified to go outside and play in the woods alone. In the dreams I would be walking in an abandoned or sparsely populated street crossing, usually with a traffic light. The bear would be walking around on the streets, not paying attention to anybody, and nobody in the dream seemed to notice the bear or be afraid of it but me.
During my first year in NY I was working with an energy healer and counselor (we were cleaning bathrooms at a retreat center) about my bear dreams, as well as my dreams of other large, scary animals, and she pointed out that the animals were probably present to protect me or help me to integrate the qualities that I needed as a child to handle certain situations that the animals had and I did not. I realized that the bears were showing up in my dreams because they represented strength, independence, bravery, mothering, love/care for younger generations, protection... A few days before I talked to this woman I'd dreamt about Spirit Bear, the all-white black bear. All of this seemed very auspicious.
Previous to this I lived in Utah and worked as a housekeeper at another retreat center/lodge. I lived near the Grand Staircase Escalante and hiked often and by myself. I was told that there were Grizzly and Kodiak bears in that area of Utah, and as terrified as I was I felt drawn to the bears. It was later that year when I moved to NY that I discovered the music of Mariee Sioux and her song 'Bundles', which takes much imagery from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes' story of La Loba, and how we all begin as bundles of bones in the desert that need to be collected. There is a part of this song by Mariee Sioux that says, "And there's a grizzly bearing in me, there's a grizzly bearing in me...and in you, and in us and in we...Grizzly paws hide me, and grizzly paws hold me, Grizzly cradles me, raising me like an offering of a bundle of sticks to the sun, to the sun..." It was that image that helped me to further integrate the bears in my waking and dreaming life.
Seeing the black bear the other day and working through these old fears and integrating the bear into my existence by just accepting that we are both animals who belong to the earth is even easier because the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers are here on campus, and their energy is permeating everything. Spirit Bear and I have a lot of work to do before we get there, but I think we're on a happy path thanks to all of these synchronicities.
I'm also getting my reiki level 1 attunement tonight! I'm very excited.
