I am so sad right now. I was driving along the Alaska Highway this morning when a tanker truck, two vehicles ahead of me, hit and injured an animal. At first I thought it was a large black dog, but as I got closer I saw it was a young bear. The driver of the tanker truck didn’t even stop.
The poor thing slowly dragged itself off the highway and into the bush. I could do nothing to help it but make a phone call to the Yukon government and wait for 15 agonizing minutes until three conservation officers came with their guns to put the animal out of its misery.
Besides myself, one car and one truck stopped when they saw the accident. A few men jumped out of their vehicles. They were looking into the woods and I heard one say, “Too bad I didn’t have a bear tag!” The other laughed and responded, “Yeah, what a beautiful coat!”
I felt sick to my stomach and burst into tears. One of the men came by to talk to me but soon left me alone, probably not wanting to deal with my emotions.
I say again…there is bad medicine in the Yukon these days. I wish I knew what to do to make it right.
Some later thoughts: I was driving on Saturday morning and noticed that a ground hog had been hit by a vehicle along the highway. The ground hog was dragging its hind end off the road just the same as that bear was dragging its hind end. Two such similar incidents in four days…what is going on? Before now I’ve never seen anything like this. But then I’ve not experienced anything before like what is going on politically in the territory either. Dishonesty, cowardice…where is this all going to lead?
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June 30, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Lucca
I’m mourning your bear. I accidentally killed a rabbit once in Scotland and I cried too. We’re the ones who cut up the land with our roads and then they can’t get to where they have every right to be.
My book says that bear medicine is about the power of introspection. In the contrary, and I can’t imagine anything more contrary than a bear being killed, it is about letting our internal dialogue confuse our perception of our true goals. In seeking answers or advice from others, we may have placed our own feelings and knowing aside. It advises us to reclaim the power of our knowing.
Food for thought.
From: Medicine Cards, Jamie Sams and David Carson, Bear & Co., santa Fe, NM, 1988.
June 30, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Lucca
I just read your extra comment about the groundhog. I looked it up as it isn’t in my book and they dig and hibernate, and climb trees to escape. It seems to me that there is a lot of digging going on in the Yukon and maybe we’re all being asked to come out of our ‘hibernation’ and really look at what is happening before we end up ‘up a tree’.
Too big a stretch of the metaphor?
June 30, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Fawn
*Hugs*