The Way Of The Bear

The Way Of The Bear

By: Kathy Roberts

One day a mother bear and her two cubs were walking near a river. The cubs ran down to the water and began splashing and jumping and playing. The mother bear sat quietly by the river until her cubs noticed that she was not joining in their revelry.

Bears are solitary souls that wander the world alone, except during the time they spend with their cubs. They give up their solitude as a sacrifice to the Earth they love so that she’s never without Bear Consciousness. But this is a big sacrifice, and even the youngest cub knows that.

When the mother bear is silent, her cubs will come to her. They know that it’s time for a lesson and that each lesson she gives them is essential to their upbringing.

The lesson of the day

The two cubs came and sat quietly on either side of their mother. It was a full five minutes before she spoke. When she did, it was in almost a whisper. Bears have interesting voices. They sound the way you might expect the trunk of an ancient tree to sound: deep and earthy.

“The river passing before us is the home of an ancient people,” she began. “Their story is the foundation of all our stories.”

The cubs settled in beside their mother and looked down into the river. They did not see anyone, ancient or otherwise. “Where are they?” the two cubs asked, almost in unison.

“Follow me and I will show you. But be very quiet. We must be respectful of their privacy as we ask others to be respectful of ours,” she whispered. Her voice sounded like honey dripping from a too-full comb.

She led her cubs to a spot where the river pooled away from the current. The mother bear stared calmly into the shallows, among the reeds and sedge, and then pointed at something that looked exactly like everything else. The cubs stared down where their mother indicated, their noses nearly breaking through the river’s skin, yet they saw nothing new.

“We don’t see anything,” they protested.

“Shh. Sit here and keep looking, but say nothing. When you see them, walk quietly back to where we were sitting and I will tell you what I know of them,” the mother bear said, so quietly that a leaf falling nearby nearly drowned out her voice.

The cubs sat and continued to stare into the river. They saw rocks and leaves and twigs and bits of this and that. The sunlight danced silver across the surface and made a kind of lightning in the clouds reflected there. Further out, the river chased itself downstream, forming whitecaps as it ran. Still, the cubs were unable to see any ancient people, or new people, or anything different at all. They were starting to get bored when one of them made a yelping sound of surprise and then headed up the bank to wait for his mother and sister.

The other cub redoubled her efforts, but staring down into the water, her brow knitted in concentration, she saw only her face reflected back. She began to protest that it was not fair that her brother had seen “it” and she had not.

Her mother sat without comment, and the cub felt ashamed for having given in to her frustration. She looked at her mother and tried to emulate her calm. Finally, barely breathing, she stared down into the pool and was startled to see “it” staring back at her. She, like her brother, yelped with surprise and headed up to the bank to wait for her mother.

The mother bear slowly lumbered up the bank to where her cubs were waiting. They could hardly wait for her to sit down before they started questioning her about what they had seen.

“Did you see the river looking back at us?” the boy cub asked his sister.

“I did! I saw the river staring right back at me!” she said. “Mother, why does the river have eyes and how in the world did you ever notice?”

“My mother showed me so that I could show you,” she explained. “That is how I show my love for you. I show you everything I can so that you can show your own children when it is time. I show you everything I can so that when you are alone, you have something important to think about. I show you everything I can so that you can see the world maybe just a bit more clearly than I do. I show you everything I can so that your life will be as sacred to you as mine is to me.

We are a solitary clan. If you come here as a bear, then I immediately understand that you have come to wander the world without fear of predators, but also without companionship. You are, by the nature of your birth, contemplative and solitary. If you were not, you would have arrived in a different form. My job is to prepare you for a life lived quietly and, for the most part, alone.

The river was looking at you. Like everything else in the world, the river is alive. It is made of water, the first element after the first question, “Who am I?” Water fell from those words and the One that asked moved across that element and drew life from its depth. After dividing day from night and land from the sea, love took the last rays of the sun from the first day of the world, breathing life into the orange-red of dusk and setting it free inside the rivers and streams.

Just as we have blood running through our veins, the world has salmon running through its veins. Everything is like that; a reflection of the One repeated endlessly inside and outside of all of us. It is the awareness of that fact that makes all the difference. The Salmon People have become the eyes of the Living Water, the awareness of that environment personified in fish form. Their health reflects the health of the entire world. Just as trees belong both to the Earth and to the sky, the salmon tie water to the Earth. Trees give themselves totally to the sacred dirt but act as anchors to the Sky People, and, in a similar way, the Salmon People understand the waters with all they are but give themselves completely to those of us that walk the Earth.

?

Those eyes that you saw looking back at you from the river’s bed are the newest eyes of an ancient promise. Each year, eggs are fertilized in these waters. When it is time, raised by the water and the sun alone, they will hatch and grow. Eventually, they will feel the call of the great oceans and will swim backward, always facing the home they are leaving so that they will remember every turn and every rush when they return. They will spend years within the beating heart of the Mother until they feel the overwhelming desire to return home. Then, they will feel the Earth herself pushing them back to their birth waters. They’ll hurl themselves against currents and rocks, and against all odds, they will break themselves almost completely in order to get home to create life within the waters. And when they have finished, they’ll return to the One who moved the waters.

As a bear, I belong to the Earth but I fish in the sacred water in order to live. I do not perfectly belong to either element. But the Salmon People are the Waters in which they live. There is no distance between the two. They are born to sacrifice their lives for their progeny and then for the rest of us. It is their flesh and blood that feeds us and many other creatures of Earth. It is their flesh and blood that feeds the water itself.

It will be up to you, my children, to respect the great Salmon People. They are the eyes and the consciousness of the water that gave life to all. We of the Bear Clan depend on the multitude of Salmon People for our survival. When we eat them, it is good to remember their sacrifice, their connection to the Mother and to the One that loves. It is right and proper to look to the waters when we endeavor to understand ourselves. It is right to understand sacrifice as what we give to others that states the real need in them rather than the need in us. Giving what is needed instead of what we need to give is one of the ways we are able to span the distance between who we are in time and who we are in reality. Love and only love informs true sacrifice with the One true light.”

The mother bear fell back into silence. Her two cubs sat with her until the urge to move and play overcame them and they tumbled down the bank. They were careful not to disturb the water, though. The mother bear noticed this and felt happy. Her children would remember what they had seen. They would remember and they would tell their children. That is the way of the bear.

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