Encounters with Nature: Regaining our Bearings
Paul Shepard (1925-1996) is one of the pioneers of human ecology. In the lead
essay of his new book, Encounters with Nature, Shepard outlines one of his
central themes: that the bear became an archetype for our developing sense of
‘self’ and ‘other,’ catalyzing the stirrings of consciousness inside the
human animal.
He posits that our observing and testing wits with this magnificent creature
sparked the beginnings of our first and greatest technology -- language, and,
specifically, our ability to use metaphor and symbology. The female bear,
after disappearing mysteriously with the sun all during the dark winter
months, reappears with cubs in the spring. To early humans, the she-bear may
have represented the mysteries of life and renewal.
Shepard notes that we named the most prominent constellations in the sky Ursa
Major and Ursa Minor, Big Bear and Little Bear. Our language captures "bear"
in many forms: to bear fruit, to bear a child, to bear witness to, etc. Much
of the imagery in Native arts and culture-mask making, dance, and
song-features the bear.
Ironically, now that humans -- with the help of animals who provide us both food
and food for thought -- have become more conscious, we seem to have forgotten
our origins and our helpers. We devastate the natural world and reduce to
smaller and smaller patches those wild places where our companions in
evolution can survive.
This essay, "The Origin of Metaphor: The Animal Connection," ends with an
uncharacteristically dramatic appeal. As Shepard says, "At the risk of being
a little melodramatic, I close with a letter delivered to me by a bear." The
bear, writing to "primate P. Shepard and Interested Parties," responds:
Having made them human, we continue to do so and now serve more and more in
therapeutic ways, holding heir hands, so to speak, as they kill our wildness.
. . . Once we were the bridges, exemplars of change, mediators with the
future and the unseen. . . Now their numbers leave little room for us. They
are wrong about our departure, thinking it to be a part of their progress
instead of their emptying. When we are gone they will not know who they are.
Supposing themselves to be the purpose of it all, purpose will elude them.
Their world will fade into an endless dusk with no whippoorwill to call the
owl in the evening and no thrush to make a dawn.
Let’s hope, with Shepard’s guidance from the pages of this text, that we can
regain our bearings and forge a different path.
*
Encounters with Nature, Essays by Paul Shepard, edited by Florence R.
Shepard, Introduction by David Petersen, Island Press, copyright 1999,
Hardback, 223 pages.
