Note: This was completed in early June, 2019 — the below event taking place on the road back from Wilderness Inquiry staff training.
Yesterday
A black bear wandered across the road
Several seconds in front of our
speeding van
A visceral excitement
An energy
Was coursed through us travelers
Witnesses to this other
kind of voyager
It seems to me
That they have it all wrong
Professing the existence of
but one universe
For that seems impossible..
When afforded the briefest glimpse
into another’s existence
another’s world
and experience
I wish
That science and logic and reasoning
Could deduce all that passed
during this rare encounter
Jolts of something
primitive and instantaneous
catalyzed
Largely foreign
And absent
To collective modern humanity
But then again
I also don’t..
Because all that we deduce
pigeon-hole
simplify
justify
attempt to explain away
Is grounded in what
we are able to perceive
And per nature’s dictates
We may not extricate ourselves
From our minds
or bodies
These personal universes of ours
Thus as bear lumbered
And van subconsciously slowed in awe
These things
I could not help but ponder
In my universe
We soon find out
Bullets have again shredded
air and flesh
Another mass shooting
Has torn up the man-dominated frontcountry
How is it
That we now find such separation
Between universes
Cold steel
and warm triggers
Forming but one insurmountable barrier
Between us
and these other beings
Of former co-habitation
Today then
Yesterday’s encounter
Falls behind
Waysided and relegated to
a chance spot
a single thread
On the stoic gray ribbon
that is man’s road
I am returning home now
And all that which it entails
is not lost on me
Zipping as I am like a blood cell
in a big metal box
through arteries of asphalt
Land and life surround these intrusions
But must take care to not themselves
intrude
As fresh kill
Steaming along arteries' edges
Provides stark reminder
But perhaps this is in fact
a two-way street..
Our bear knows not the freedoms of our travel
Our unmatched speed
Our incredible mobility
Untethered to animalistic constraints
Yet what of animalistic freedoms
I wonder..
At home
Off the trail
Clocks tick
Alarms ring
Phones ding
Gears stall
Bills pile
Time flies
But in another universe
Nestled in the same world
Life… lumbers
Here
The backcountry is no expedition
And hardship is no novelty
The laws of this universe
are felt
not inked
And travel
pleasures
sufferings
Are not had
behind lonely panes of glass
That this sort of palpable sadness
palpable distance
Is perhaps the fundamental sentiment
Passing between man myself
to bear
May sound somewhat facetious
It stems however
From our universes not being as inherently
separated
nor incompatible
As they might seem
Bridging that gap though
Is something that we and only we
as humans
May decide to act upon
For the changes we have but recently
wrought to the world
And our place + interactions within it
We have but wrought
by
for
upon
ourselves
I don’t know
If there are
Or are not
In fact parallel universes
Interweaving
And spawning varying versions
of life’s possibilities
But I know
That everytime I
Watch an eagle roost near a river
Regard the brutal efficiency of an ant colony
Feel the chill of a mournful loon call
Or intercept a black bear’s morning path
The divisions between
my present humanity
and past states of being
As and among other lifeforms
Soften
Are dissolved
a bit…
A kind of void being filled
With a wonderment
Connections lost
Connections gained
Simple
if you think about it
Beautiful
but all too easy to overlook
As a paw falls
Tires roll
Two gazes match
A time
An energy
And concurrent universes
Suspending in dripping amber
Before a van speeds on
The gazes break
And a black bear pads on quickly
Into the forest shadows
Jake Marble 