Encounters with Nature - Paul Shepard - Part II

With each book I read for this course I will be looking for an answer to the question, "What are ways that we, as humans, relate to, connect with, and identify with animals?" In my reading of Encounters with Nature by Paul Shepard I found many ways that humans relate to and connect with animals:

• Some of us eat them
  


• Some of us hunt and kill them
  


• We act like animals in our play as children
  


• We include their likeness in art, poetry, and music
  

Paul Shepard believes that we as humans need animals to exist. Our heart, mind, body, and soul needs animals. Shepard would agree that without our connection to animals we would lose our state of well being.

"The human species emerged enacting, dreaming, and thinking animals and cannot be fully itself without them." (Shepard, 6)

"It is not only in human evolution that the animals - and, in a slightly different way, plants - were essential to the emergence of mind but the growth of the individual as well." (Shepard, 10)

"Just as the natural world provides us with the means of physical health - good air and water, nutrition, and healing substances - plants and animals are sensible figures in the health of mind." (Shepard, 13)

We have found ways in which we relate to animals that give us comfort. Without them we might feel discontent and alone. As children we learn about the world around us in picture books. From these books, we learn about bears, lions, billy goats, and wolves before we ever see them in real life. We sing songs about kookaburras and feel a closeness with nature and it's non-human animals. They allow us nourishment through eating their flesh. We paint their likenesses and we write poems about them. We feel as though we know them. Some find a closeness and spiritual connection to animals by hunting them.

There is a certain comfort in knowing that they are out there in the wilderness or in our city trees. I cannot imagine a walk through my neighborhood without bird songs. What a lonely walk! Their form as statues guard our homes and businesses and as pets they keep us company. We selfishly expect them to greet us when we get home, to warm our feet when we sleep, and to put up with us!

These ways in which we relate to animals makes it easy for us to give them singular attributes. We have been tought since childhood that bears are vicious, lions are ferocious, cats are curious, mice are timid, rabbits eat carrots, woodpeckers peck, and dogs are a man's best friend. "Dreams, folktales, and play contain the patent error of pretending that each animal corresponds to a single conventional attribute...True, this single dimension does not do justice to the intricate lives of these animals." (Shepard, 25) How insincere to say that this bird must be calling for it's mate, because that is why birds call. Maybe she is singing her favorite song, maybe she's saying hello, maybe she's happy, sad, or bored. Imagine if we labeled humans in this way...wait! We do! She's having a tantrum because she's a toddler. He likes rap music because he's black. He wakes up early because he's old. This insincerity and reducing someone to their elements happens with human and non-human animals, it happens with our notion of "the others." So it appears that if we are labeling animals in this way, we are connecting with them as well as we are connecting to people that we are labeling. Not very well!

The title of one chapter in Shepard's book is, The Animal: An Idea Waiting to Be Thought. So often, we have an idea about an animal and to us, that idea is that animal. Just like when we have an idea about a person, until we get to know that person and find a connection, that idea is who they are to us. Getting to know an animal is a pretty hard task. Getting to know another human is difficult enough, even when they speak the same language. We will never truly "know" an animal. We can only guess what they are thinking, feeling, and why they are doing what they are doing. This is like the makings of a bad relationship! When you try to guess why someone is doing something and assuming they did something because of some reason or another, you are very likely to be incorrect!

We can look at scientific research and learn why a bird sings, why a bear attacked a human, or why birds fly south, but as Paul Shepard would agree, animals are intricate beings, they have intricate lives, just as we do. There is not one explanation alone for their behavior.

Throughout Encounters with Nature hunting is mentioned as a way that humans relate to animals. Paul Shepard states, "Hunters are our agents of awareness. They are not only observers but participants and receivers. They know that we are members of a natural community and that the process of nature will never become so well understood that faith will cease to be important." (Shepard, 76-77) Shepard speaks very highly of hunters. He believes that they are the ultimate "superb minds." They are the bearers of knowledge and most in tune with nature and wildlife. From my understanding of Shepard, he views hunting, to hunters, as a necessity. It is a way of life and the ultimate means of relating to and connecting with this earth.

I do not hunt and never will hunt, although, I am very intrigued to learn more about this meditative form of hunting that Shepard seems so fond of. I am curious as to how many hunters feel this connection to the earth and to wildlife during their hunt and while consuming their gift of meat. I will conclude with an excerpt from Shepard's chapter, The Significance of Bears. He seems to have a very spiritual connection to the bear and to the hunt. He was only able to feel this deep connection to the animal because he consumed it's flesh. I will be revisiting the Timothy Treadwell documentary film, The Grizzly Man, and taking a look at his connection with grizzly bears among other wildlife as a non-hunter.

"Looking to the bear will not restore me to those distant ancestors who preceded by hundreds of millennia all that negotiation and debasement of the spirit. But it may open my heart and mind to the double gift of the bear as a feast and physician in its role as the killed and renewing deity whose grease, once tasted, is supremely relished over any other "fat of the land," and whose wildness reminds me of my wildness. The bear sustains me yet. The bear gives physical sustenance and spiritual healing. Years ago I had delicious meals of bear meat and I cooked with its fat for many weeks. More recently, in search of health in New Mexico, I entered a native healer's house. In a firelit room he was ready in traditional regalia, surrounded by a rich array of paraphernalia. The ensuing smoke, teas, chants, dances, and songs washed over my senses. As the hours passed I drifted in the nexus between the physical body and the spiritual realm of medicine. I was aware of being embraced by black, hairy arms and hugged with paws with claws. In my ear was an unmistakable snuffling. The twofold gift of the bear was fulfilled." (Shepard, 97)