It’s bear season in Estes, and stories abound — the woman who met a bear in her kitchen, the bear in the cleaning company’s car, the one who lost an argument with a trash can. They are eating everything they can find before the cold, and so they are among us, minding their own enormous business.
My first bear peeled the door off a nearly new red Pontiac Sunbird like a banana. It was a mid-October honeymoon of my first marriage, at a campground in Yosemite.
Four hundred-some pounds of black bear shattered the glass, climbed through to the trunk, ripped open the cooler, and carried a week’s worth of good camping food about ten feet away to have a feast.
From the tent, ten feet in the other direction, all we heard was a noise like a metal trash can rolling down a rocky hillside. My husband at the time said, “If the bear comes in, just play dead.”
I responded, “If the bear comes in here, we are dead!”
In the morning there were coffee grounds and Tabasco ground into the upholstery, and a peanut butter jar with tongue marks as far down as a bear’s tongue can reach.
I know firsthand what a mess a bear makes. Which is why, years later, I was so sure I didn’t want one on my rug.
It was the twenty-second of February, 2022, the winter after my child Bee died at eighteen. I had told my bear story to a friend the evening before. I dozed off, and dreamed a bear was crashing around on the mountainside across the valley, and then it was climbing up over the railing of the deck into a space I couldn’t tell was inside the house or out.
I was laughing, filming it on my phone, and I got up to move the rug so it wouldn’t get bear all over it. And then the bear stood up. It was enormous. I was not afraid, only in awe of the sheer power and bulk of it. “Embodied chaos,” is how I wrote it down that night.
A poem came afterward.
The bear is Bee.
The bear is grief.
The bear is me —
big and wild,
smelly and stunning,
powerful and persistent,
messy and present.
What else I cannot say,
at least not today.
Two years later I stayed a few nights with our dog Bailey at a new retreat center down in Nederland. Bailey started barking and wouldn’t stop; I figured it was the UPS truck.
The owner saw what it was: a bear had broken into her bear-proof trash can, and Bailey had run it off. So of course we went out on her deck and I told her my bear stories, and somewhere in the telling I looked up and realized where I was standing.
That deck, above that valley, with that mountainside across the creek, was the deck in the dream. I had never been there before I dreamed it.
The next summer I went back, a day or two before a retreat, because it was the anniversary of Bee’s death and I wanted to be somewhere quiet for it.
In the evening I sat by the big deck and heard rustling across the creek, very close — and watched a bear and her cub come down. The mama came closer and went quiet. I stood up. And we looked at each other for a long time, twenty-five feet apart, maybe less. Then she went back to her cub and started eating. I was no threat to them. They were no threat to me.
Here is what the bear has taught me. The bear is what we’re most afraid of — the thing we flee, or bury, or manage, anything rather than be present to it in all its wild smelliness and mess. Grief. Fear. Anger.
We are not taught how to live in the dark; we’re taught how to bury it. And pushed away, these things don’t leave. They grow — wilder, larger, closer to the deck.
The mystics call that place the dark night, and they say it is a sign of life, not death: we are affected by darkness where we are most deeply involved, in what we love most. The poet Jessica Powers wrote, “Here in the dark, I clutch the garments of God.”
Just look at our public life right now — a whole country astonished every morning to find something enormous standing up on the deck. The bear we will not turn toward in ourselves is the one we end up meeting in the world.
When we finally draw these bears close, they stay messy. And they are loved, and lovable, and they were ours all along. The transformation comes through consciousness and consent — through staying. Not a judgment on anyone who cannot, right now. Only to say that we have a choice here, and how we navigate it makes a difference — not just for us, but for everyone.
So two wonderings for the fall. What is the bear you’ve avoided? And if you drew a little closer, what might it be showing you? You don’t have to invite it in today. Maybe just don’t drive it away. They do come closer this time of year.
Elizabeth Lightfoot Jameson is an Episcopal priest and a midwife of being, living in Estes Park. She hosts The Remembering Way podcast and writes at Broken Open on Substack.
If this stirs something and you’d like more: a season of circles begins in Estes and online in September, and Second Sundays — Sept. 13, Oct. 11, Nov. 8 — are free and open to anyone.
Related
The bear on the deck
It’s bear season in Estes, and stories abound — the woman who met a bear in her kitchen, the bear in the cleaning company’s car, the one who lost an argument with a trash can. They are eating everything they can find before the cold, and so they are among us, minding their own enormous business.
My first bear peeled the door off a nearly new red Pontiac Sunbird like a banana. It was a mid-October honeymoon of my first marriage, at a campground in Yosemite.
Four hundred-some pounds of black bear shattered the glass, climbed through to the trunk, ripped open the cooler, and carried a week’s worth of good camping food about ten feet away to have a feast.
From the tent, ten feet in the other direction, all we heard was a noise like a metal trash can rolling down a rocky hillside. My husband at the time said, “If the bear comes in, just play dead.”
I responded, “If the bear comes in here, we are dead!”
In the morning there were coffee grounds and Tabasco ground into the upholstery, and a peanut butter jar with tongue marks as far down as a bear’s tongue can reach.
I know firsthand what a mess a bear makes. Which is why, years later, I was so sure I didn’t want one on my rug.
It was the twenty-second of February, 2022, the winter after my child Bee died at eighteen. I had told my bear story to a friend the evening before. I dozed off, and dreamed a bear was crashing around on the mountainside across the valley, and then it was climbing up over the railing of the deck into a space I couldn’t tell was inside the house or out.
I was laughing, filming it on my phone, and I got up to move the rug so it wouldn’t get bear all over it. And then the bear stood up. It was enormous. I was not afraid, only in awe of the sheer power and bulk of it. “Embodied chaos,” is how I wrote it down that night.
A poem came afterward.
Two years later I stayed a few nights with our dog Bailey at a new retreat center down in Nederland. Bailey started barking and wouldn’t stop; I figured it was the UPS truck.
The owner saw what it was: a bear had broken into her bear-proof trash can, and Bailey had run it off. So of course we went out on her deck and I told her my bear stories, and somewhere in the telling I looked up and realized where I was standing.
That deck, above that valley, with that mountainside across the creek, was the deck in the dream. I had never been there before I dreamed it.
The next summer I went back, a day or two before a retreat, because it was the anniversary of Bee’s death and I wanted to be somewhere quiet for it.
In the evening I sat by the big deck and heard rustling across the creek, very close — and watched a bear and her cub come down. The mama came closer and went quiet. I stood up. And we looked at each other for a long time, twenty-five feet apart, maybe less. Then she went back to her cub and started eating. I was no threat to them. They were no threat to me.
Here is what the bear has taught me. The bear is what we’re most afraid of — the thing we flee, or bury, or manage, anything rather than be present to it in all its wild smelliness and mess. Grief. Fear. Anger.
We are not taught how to live in the dark; we’re taught how to bury it. And pushed away, these things don’t leave. They grow — wilder, larger, closer to the deck.
The mystics call that place the dark night, and they say it is a sign of life, not death: we are affected by darkness where we are most deeply involved, in what we love most. The poet Jessica Powers wrote, “Here in the dark, I clutch the garments of God.”
Just look at our public life right now — a whole country astonished every morning to find something enormous standing up on the deck. The bear we will not turn toward in ourselves is the one we end up meeting in the world.
When we finally draw these bears close, they stay messy. And they are loved, and lovable, and they were ours all along. The transformation comes through consciousness and consent — through staying. Not a judgment on anyone who cannot, right now. Only to say that we have a choice here, and how we navigate it makes a difference — not just for us, but for everyone.
So two wonderings for the fall. What is the bear you’ve avoided? And if you drew a little closer, what might it be showing you? You don’t have to invite it in today. Maybe just don’t drive it away. They do come closer this time of year.
Elizabeth Lightfoot Jameson is an Episcopal priest and a midwife of being, living in Estes Park. She hosts The Remembering Way podcast and writes at Broken Open on Substack.
If this stirs something and you’d like more: a season of circles begins in Estes and online in September, and Second Sundays — Sept. 13, Oct. 11, Nov. 8 — are free and open to anyone.
Related
Elizabeth Lightfoot Jameson
Elizabeth Lightfoot Jameson is a spiritual teacher, contemplative guide, and ordained Episcopal priest based in Estes Park. Her writing, Broken Open, is at elizabethjameson.substack.com. More by Elizabeth Lightfoot Jameson