Walking with Bb: a story exploring the psychic connection between one woman and her bear.
Preface:
The black bear – hunting season in Maine is brutal – four months of bear hell – five if one includes the month where hunters can track bears for “practice” with hounds – separate mothers and cubs, terrorize them, tree them and do anything but legally kill them. During the legal slaughter, Hunters bait bears with junk food by putting old donuts etc. in cans and shoot the bear while he or she is eating. Most bears (82 percent) are slaughtered in this manner, the rest are killed by hounding and trapping. The season begins in August and lasts through December. Trapping, by the way, is illegal in every state but Maine. Black bears are hated, and that hatred will, of course, eventually result in their extirpation.
I had a shy (male) year old black bear visiting my house this past summer with whom I developed a friendship, and what follows is part of our story:
Last Saturday I was walking down the road when I remembered that I had not done my daily “circle of protection” imaging for Bb (standing as he was the day he visited me at the window early in August). When I began to do this another picture of Bb moving on all four feet with his face turned towards mine super-imposed itself over his standing image. I could almost see his expression, but not quite.
I didn’t know what this imaging meant beyond that we were communicating in some unknown way, and he was in the area (not a good thing on hunting Saturdays). He had not been coming in most nights and I was worried…
That night he came.
He is still making nightly visits five days later, the most sequentially consistent visits since September 15th, the day I believed that he had been shot.
This experience prompted me to write about telepathy and precognition. It is close to All Hallows and the full Hunter’s moon (Nov 3). I keep listening to Charlie Russell’ story which reminds me that loving bears (especially male bears) is hard, almost a sure recipe for disaster, and that I was not alone in this deep concern for and fear of losing Bb. I can barely stand to remember my other bear losses and I can’t stand feeling them.
Even after I wrote about the incident with Bb, the experience seemed to carry a charge that didn’t dissipate. Had I missed something?
Next I wrote “Root Healer,” exploring the possibility that as I continued to act as Bb’s “little bear mother” now employing psychic techniques to keep him safe (in some desperation as it was the only means left open to me to protect this very vulnerable yearling), that Bb’s presence might also include a gift for me and that it might involve some kind of root healing for my body because Nature thrives on reciprocity.
One idea I missed completely, for it was so obvious. Bb’s image was communicating to me that we were having a psychic conversation in that very moment. It was the first time in three months of imaging protective circles that moved with him that I had confirmation from him that we were communicating effectively in this unknown way.
This rarely happens.
Normally when I do this kind of work, I just do it. I don’t get direct confirmation that it’s working from the animal itself (except with Lily b).
Knowing this helped me make another decision I might not have made so intentionally. The hunting season will last into mid December, and I will be traveling during that last month. I keep thinking that putting actual physical distance between Bb and I might pose more of a threat for his life and I have to remind myself that psychic phenomena are not distance dependent. I should be able to image that protective circle every day and feel that it is working. Bb has already shown me that it can but I fear adding distance because I don’t completely trust my own perceptions.*
I suspect believing might be an additional dimension of ensuring success when it comes to psychic protection for this bear. But how do I incorporate belief into a picture that is so clouded with personal/cultural doubt? Half the time I don’t believe myself and virtually no one except Rupert Sheldrake, Iren and Harriet have ever taken my experiences seriously. I have to remind myself that I have done this work many times dealing with doubt and it worked anyway.
The point of writing this reflection might be to put me on a new edge of increasing Bb’s odds of survival. If it’s possible that an attitude that embraces believing in what I do could help me protect Bb more effectively until hunting is over and its time for him to den in peace I want to claim it.
The question I need to answer now is how to go about moving into a more trusting self as a woman who continues to walk with a bear at her side?
The night after I wrote the above paragraph I dream of the doubters in the roles of my parents, and in a friend. I take these dreams seriously as doubters inside me and out. These dreams may be telling me that it is unreasonable to expect me to believe that what I do works when no one else does?
The problem with this idea is that on some level I do believe. I feel as if I am walking with this bear, every single day. I think about him constantly. The only thing that got me out of the house yesterday was that he was out of chocolate donuts. Something is intensifying my relationship with Bb although I never see him. I am caught in a field of bear energy and information, perhaps through some version of beauty and the beast. That an archetype is working through me is no surprise to a Jungian analyst, I am, after all, one!
An archetype is a universal pattern and force of energy/information that is lived through by humans according to Jungian parlance. A person who lives through the hero myth is an example. But unlike me, Jungians don’t believe that animals/or any non –human being can live through these patterns. I happen to believe that animals and humans can share an archetype with both living it in very specific ways. I think Bb and I are sharing an archetypal “field” of energy and information.
I also love this bear mightily in spite of my initial attempts to keep some distance between us because of the seemingly intolerable grief that I sustained with respect to bear losses between 2014 and 2016 – the worst and most desperate years of my life. I conclude that I need to keep the Bear Door open for not only for Bb’s safety but for my own mental health. Bears provide me with critical life energy, without which I am lost.
Today, while wandering outside around here checking Bb’s trees I was thinking about the bear’s insistence upon marking so many with either a back or front rub, a bite or by clawing. In almost twenty years of research I have never witnessed so much of this behavior by one yearling. I have written to the NABC, The American Bear Center asking them what they think. My own hypothesis stems from the belief that Bb’s mother was shot, forcing the cub to den alone and in the spring he returned to her territory and claimed it as his own. If this is true his behavior might be related to the fact that he was orphaned but I have no idea if I am on the right track or not. It might also feed into the question of why he stayed instead of striking out on his own at the end of July.
While checking trees I suddenly remembered I hadn’t checked the telephone pole that most male bears used to use routinely for communicate especially during breeding season. My formal study years were over and most of the bears I loved had been shot. When I went to check the pole, now hidden by trees, I was surprised to see that the ground had been pounded down all around the pole (a stiff legged walk had been made) and that the pole itself had been bitten hard many times. Some bites occurred recently. There was also a clear path to and from the pole that I missed during the summer. Inspecting the damage I looked for bits of hair, and sure enough I found three! With these treasures held in my fingers like they were gold, I returned to the house and put them under scotch tape. I was absurdly happy to have found them.
Bb did not visit last night, and the deer hunt began at dawn, which means that more hunters will be in this area. Having already imaged Bb in his circle of protection, all I can do is write, wait, and hope.
*** Traveling did break the psychic connection between this yearling and myself – but it was due to my own deep distress, and the beginning of a bout of insomnia that I am still dealing with as January approaches along with seemingly endless adjustments. I do not know if Bb survived long enough to enter into hibernation, but my hope is that he did.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright