It’s been a busy summer with lots of fires and floods and people moving around. I haven’t had a chance to post much but want to bring some peace to the world of my experience of the beauty of the rivers. Here in B.C. there is a program called Run of the River that is creating dams in smaller watersheds for local power. Waters all over the Earth are being dammed and captured for power. They are all very damaging. So much is being lost and destroyed without a thought for all the other beings that depend upon free flowing waters for life. Oxygen is a most important product of free flowing water. We are powering up gadgets while disempowering life……
The True Run of the River…..
I love the rivers with their clear turquoise fresh water pools, trout, salmon fry and bullheads waiting for us to toss in some morsels like horseflies that we get trying to bite us. The black bear ambles along the well worn bear trail eating ripening salal, thimble and huckleberries. The salmon berries are over. It is midsummer, Lammas in the old Celtic traditions where they celebrated the seasons, mid-seasons and the Earth.
I marvel at the Nighthawks which aren't a hawk at all but a big Swallow that comes out at dusk and dawn to eat insects. Their wings making an occasional sweeping sound when they dive. The indigenous dove calls gently from the cool green forest. They are few now and are endangered.
Mother Merganser with a huge brood hides them along the banks under overhanging roots, teaching her young who cannot fly, how to avoid danger and to catch little fish. The Kingfisher sweeps by scolding us for being there. Deer tracks are in the gravel of the bar where we camp. There is a healthy mother with her fawn, ears alert.
It is a high fire risk so we brought a little burner to make coffee, etc. It is nice with no smoke. We like to see and feed the trout. We have enough food for this stay. Sometime in the future they may need to feed us.
The Eagle calls and the ducks hide and Ravens get agitated protecting their young. The Eagles' great patience sees everything and watches for opportunities.
Sometimes I see or hear the wolves. The Trumpeter swans have left. I think something got one of them last year and there was only one remaining, missing its' partner with which it mates for life.
Squirrels chitter in the forest evading predators and eating the seeds from the evergreen cones, dropping them down and stashing them away for winter. A beautiful butterfly passes us, so fragile.
The Robins and Thrush, (which I call "whit" birds, as that is the main call they have, are the early sounds at dawn unless you are awakened by the sound of the Nighthawk wings as they dive.
There is one Crow that make's me laugh with its' funny “burrowh” sound, so low and different from everything else, but then it is all unique and diverse.
The bubbling of the river over the rocks at the rapids is a background sound to all this. The free flowing waters reassure me that this precious substance continues to flow from the Earth out of springs and protected by the dark green forests, ferns and bush. I love and thank it all.
These are some of the River Beings we encountered this time....
Ravens with two babies, Eagle, Nighthawks, Dove, Kingfisher, Squirrels, Trout, Salmon, Steelhead, Bullhead, Flounder, Robins, Dipper, Dragonfly, Swallows, Insects, Bees, Bear, Wolf, Deer with fawns, Thrush, Woodpecker, Hummingbird, Owl, Ducks, Mergansers, and much much more. This is their home.
Susanne Lawson, August, 2021
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If you have a quiet moment in this busy summer you may read this very short story…..
BEAR MEDICINE
This is a true story as happened on a beach in an inlet of Clayoquot Sound, B.C. when I came upon a day bed where a black bear would rest after feeding on small crabs under rocks along the shore. Its body was not far away, only the gall bladder and head and paws removed, shot as trophy and its remains left behind. All this triggered the following experience and it remains a mystery to me today.
BEAR MEDICINE .....A Short Story from the West Coast of Canada
Susanne Hare 1994
I could hear a distant wren's song echoing through the forest nearby as I stared, my heart pounding. The bear stopped, turned toward me and rose on his haunches, sniffing the air as he took on immense proportions. It was a moment of one to one... a being of the forest, the wild, the earth, meeting another from a society of mechanical, technical and chemical worlds.
We met in the heart, and in the soul as lightning bolts of timelessness surged around us. Ancient pictures of a human mother breast feeding her two bear cubs, a wolf mother suckling two human babies...forest paths traveled together amongst towering trees, fishing side by side in rivers teeming with salmon, walking elk trails together, the howl of the wolf calling me, calling us back to the source.
I went beyond fear as a shamanic voyage took over me and I slid into a world of bear medicine. As he lowered himself, the bears scent of fish oil, berries, grasses and damp fur exploded in my senses. He turned away and as he did so, his eyes invited me to follow him.
I stepped softly on the grassy trail that had been well worn to the beach where we met. It led into the giant trees...cedars, hemlock, spruce and large ancient ferns brushed my face. The moisture made the forest a place of fertility... the damp ground and spongy root systems, mosses and lichens and the humus of leaves, cones and needles burying and nurturing the seeds.
The bear's occasional grunts seemed a comfortable sound as I followed him carefully through the trail by the river. We started to rise up a sidehill of the mountain, away from the rushing of the shallow areas and crystal waterfall pools. The berries were lush and drooping on the fragile huckleberry bushes. Many were bent over, some broken, the thin branches stripped by his great mouth, and several large piles of purple berry seed droppings were alongside the trail.
My wren power followed me - the precious little mouse-sized brown wrens who are the keepers of the forest and beaches along the West Coast. Such a small, yet amazing being darting in and out of branches and under logs with its' "tsch tsch" sound.
The bear turned to look at me, just his great head and neck - a beautiful being, so black that he shone a dark blue with eyes deep and knowing. He sniffed some mushrooms and ate one, then took his big paw and slid his claws under a chunk of bark on an old fallen tree. It slid off like a shell and under it were fine patterns of worn-like shapes that held many grubs. He snuffled them in easily and continued on. I stepped over the chunk of bark marveling at the hieroglyphics that the patterns formed. They seemed to spell a word..."mystic".
In that instant, my hearing and sense of smell expanded to take on something akin to the bear in front of me - a profound awareness of all life and energies around me. I could hear acutely the river in the distance and at the same time, the fine sounds of a far off raven calling. As trees and ferns breathed, the ground rose to the sky with a dance of life that was marvelous.
We approached a rocky cliff face and in front of a crevice, the ground was worn bare and smoothed. It was dry as an overhang of rock protected it from the rain.
Dream world and reality were in limbo as I stepped into the darkness following the bear. Smells of damp earth and musk, the aroma of living earth dwellers, grasses that had been stuffed into the den...all enabled me to "see" with my nose. My eyes saw nothing but blackness, as black as the bear himself. But eyes looked at me, reflecting the entrance to the outside world, and I was drawn into a world of other beings....of wolf, ram, mountain goat, of elk and moose, even into the liquid worlds of whale, dolphin, sea lion, into skies of eagle, hawk and owl, of earth, air, water and rock and then through the fire of the soul as lightning coursed through my body in rivers of liquid light.
I was sucked through a vortex into timelessness - into the cosmos where planets whirled past in a blur. I floated, I became particles, then merged into droplets, falling to earth. I became a trickle, then a current flowing into a river. I crawled up on land. I slithered into the roots and bloomed into mushroom flowers from fine root hairs and puffed into the air to drift into bark crevices and all forest places. I was all and everything as I entered that darkness.
Time had forgotten me as I floated...drifting through fish rivers, sticky bee hives, realms of purple berries and grass roots, grubs, worms and thick fur.
My hands became claws, I grunted and rolled, scratched and gnawed, rubbed and swam. I slept a long and drowsy sleep, birthed tiny babies which nestled and suckled for many months.
Slowly I arose...I felt as if I had been sleeping as the ground and warmth of the womb-like rock made me drowsy. I turned toward the light at the cave entrance. I could feel the bear's thick, rich fur...the warmth called me to it, to curl up in it, to surrender. I struggled toward the light with another consciousness. I wanted to stay, to learn more of his world, to experience the seasonal gifts of the earth as the bear knew them.
I stumbled over a rock and fell at the entrance. It woke me from the shaman's circle, from the earth world, but I wasn't gone from it - I had experienced a new world, another path and could remember it and draw it into me.
I turned to the bear, grunted and slid along the rock on my knees acknowledging his gift and thanking him silently and then raced ecstatically down the hill, through the ferns, along the river bank to the beach. It seemed that time had passed but I didn't know if it was days or moments. I looked around the bay and sat down on a log to contemplate what was happening.
As I sat there, I realized the tide had not moved from the moment I had landed on the beach in my canoe. No time had passed. Had anything really occurred, had I slept and dreamed it all? I was confused and tried to mentally and logically define time, space and experience. I looked around for the trail where I had followed the bear. I could see the trail but no sign of fresh tracks. It had been more real and vivid than daily life presents itself - I could recall the pungent smells and sounds.
And then I heard a sound. I whirred around and there facing me was a man in a bear skin. He spoke to me, at first in a low grunt, then in audible sounds that seemed transmitted through the cortex of my brain and assimilated as thought.
He stood there with the skin draped over him loosely, his face was brown, weathered and strong, his eyes were piercing. He started slowly, speaking directly.
"I am bear, we have chosen this path and place. We are dreamers, and keepers of Turtle Island. We are medicine beings and hold the salmon people and rivers close to us. We are teachers and can see your people in colors from dark to light beings. We teach and help you as we are very close in kinship to your people, eating and living in ways that are similar. But your people have forgotten and in this they are lost. They are not full or satisfied, they are removed from the earth, and the mother is the way to the stars and to our source.
In spirit they are poor even though they have many religions.
Everything in the wild speaks to them but they do not hear. The clouds, the winds, the forests, the waters and rock can talk. Busyness keeps their minds full but their hearts are small and tight. The land is calling to you but the heartless destruction is vast, the material gluttony seems never satisfied.
Our souls are linked and I have shown you a glimpse but as we disappear and the wild is eliminated, your connection to the source gets dimmer. All the religions and beliefs will not reconnect you here as you have been given this world to learn from. It is a marriage of spirit to body, of soul to beauty and light. All your efforts will not reconstruct this world if you destroy the genetic blueprint. It is a gift, the most beautiful gift in the cosmos - a diversity found nowhere else.
We are your map to the source and it is being erased every minute, but the wild is still around you and we guard it in the hopes that there will be one who hears us. Open your hearts, eyes and senses to see what you have been gifted with, surrender to that voice and nurture this for it is the essence of life and the connection to us all."
With these words and a last sigh, he turned and dropped down onto four legs. He grunted and turned his head back to me with black piercing eyes and his large bear snout. His eyes were inviting but I knew my path. My heart opened and the wren seemEd to sing through me, and we sang this power song to the forest, to the families of the hemlock, cedar and spruce together. The song seemed to fade into the forest with the great bear as he disappeared into the green bush but it reverberated in my soul and in the heart of the mountain behind me and it is my gift and I knew I would attempt to translate into human words.
Susanne Hare Lawson, Clayoquot Sound, B.C.
Ha, i think i found out how to comment. Susanne, your words this morning, especially the bear story, reconnected me to the natural world in such a Big Picture, affirming way, when i have been so distressed by the climate crisis and Fairy Creek. You write - and see - so beautifully. Words of restoration. Beautiful!