SAO. “Indestructible Connection: Heartfelt Reunion Between Gray Bear and Woman in North American Forest Following a 5-Year Separation.”.SAO

“I’ve often employed the phrase ’embracing the bear’ to describe those instances where I push past fear and continue forward, refusing to let it hinder me. Therefore, I found it fascinating to come across the same expression in Terry Tempest Williams’s Unspoken Hunger (discussed yesterday), where it takes on a slightly different yet connected significance. In a captivating essay on women and bears, Williams delves into Marian Engle’s Bear, a remarkable and unforgettable novel depicting a woman and a bear engaged in an ‘erotics of place,’ reminiscent of mythical tales from around the world featuring animal brides and grooms.”

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“It doesn’t matter whether the bear is seen as male or female.The relationship between the two is sensual, wild.

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“The woman says, ‘Bear, take me to the bottom of the ocean with you, Bear, swim with me, Bear, put your arms around me, enclose me, swim, down, down, down, with me.’

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” ‘Bear,’ she says suddenly, ‘come dance with me.’

“They make love. Afterwards, ‘She felt pain, but it was a dear sweet pain that belonged not to mental suffering, but to the earth.’

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William writes that she, too,

“has felt the pain that arises from a recognition of beauty, pain we hold when we remember what we are connected to and the delicacy of our relations. It is this tenderness born out of connection to place that fuels my writing. Writing becomes an act of compassion toward life, the life we often refuse to see because if we look too closely or feel too deeply, there may be no end to our suffering. But words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free. This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.

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“By undressing, exposing, and embracing the bear, we undress, expose, and embrace our authentic selves. Stripped free from society’s oughts and shoulds, we emerge as emancipated beings. The bear is free to roam….

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“We are creatures of paradox, women and bears, two Animals that are enormously unpredictable, hence our mystery. Perhaps the fear of bears and the fear of women lies in our refusal to be tamed, the impulses we arouse and the forces we represent….As women connected to the earth, we are nurturing and we are fierce, we are wicked and we are sublime. The full range is ours. We hold the moon in our bellies and fire in our hearts. We bleed. We give milk. We are the mothers of first words. These words grow. They are our children. They are our stories and our poems.”

Words: The text above is fromAn Unspoken Spoken Hunger: Stories from the Field by Terry Tempest Willians (Pantheon, 1994); all rights reserved by the author.

Pictures: The images above are by the Russian surrealist photographer Katerina Plotnikova, based in Moscow; all rights reserved by the artist. The pen-and-ink drawings are Victorian illustrations, artists unknown.

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