Polar Bear and Eagle Spirit

Polar Bear and Eagle Spirit

When I first did my vision quest in 1983 in a bear wallow alongside the south Fork of the Trinity River there was a mother wood duck who brought all her ducklings downstream just after dawn into the safety of bull rushes a little downstream from me. Then she would return to her safe night place upstream at dusk. So each day would start at sunup watching the mother wood duck and all her ducklings first move downstream during the day and then upstream just at dusk for night time safety. Then in the second day of the vision quest a mated pair of bald eagles flew together overhead. This seemed like a very good sign. From this came a “Flying Eagle” song that I sometimes sung in sweats back then.

So, I related to being “Flying Eagle” a lot back then. I roamed in my spirit a lot as a messenger between God and Man. But then as I grew older into my 40s I began to change. I divorced and remarried and had another daughter with  my new wife. She related more to the bear within me. I was no longer the thin, buff and svelt 30 something and in my 40s the world weighed heavily on me and I almost died with a heart virus at age 50. I only survived by a miracle. Then I became “Growly” Bear to my new wife as in “Growl –ie”.

But then tonight I was reading “Call of the Great Spirit” and realized that I hadn’t ever defined what bear I was related to. As I thought about it I realized “all of them”.

I thought about real experiences I had had with bears in my life. The first time I saw a brown bear on a trail in Yosemite National Park we both ran from each other. But I realized tonight that other bears had naturally recognized the bear in me. Even when my young son and my father and I were in the wilderness about 20 miles East of McCloud E/NE we saw another brown bear while driving my International Harvester Scout II 4 wheel drive on a wilderness dirt road. The bear stopped on the road in front of us and rose up on its hind legs in a threatening way so we stopped the Car to get a good look at the bear as we meant it no harm. We stared at each other for about a minute like this until the bear sensed we would not fight or attack and slowly lumbered off into the wilderness to the left of us. We were sort of speechless at this completely unexpected experience.

Here too, the bear treated us with respect as if we were other bears and defended its territory against us as encroachers on his territory.

But then a couple of years ago I was in Yellowstone National Park and there was a Grizzly Bear that I nicknamed “Flower Child Grizzly Bear”. This was a bear I could relate to. All he did was sit in the flowers eating them. He was happy as long as no human came near to him or bothered him. He liked this because then he didn’t have to hit or eat any human as there were so many of them. This took my bear experience in a completely new direction.

So, tonight I was reading about Wahsek, the medicine man teaching Bobby Lake-Thom, and thinking about what exactly kind of bear I am now and I got Polar Bear because they are endangered(they may be all gone within 25 to 50 years). And the nature spirits around me and the Great Spirit all said, “Yes. You are Polar Bear Spirit. This is the bear spirit that you are.” I was amazed never to have asked this question before.

In the future it is said that most or all Polar Bears in order to survive will have to breed with the Grizzlies to become Grolar Bears so the Polar Bear genes don’t entirely go extinct.

Yes. Polar Bear Spirit. This makes a lot of sense.

My wife just said, “Are you sure you aren’t a Grizzly?” And I had to think about this as well. And what I got was that since I am “Growly Bear” to her maybe I’m a Grolar Bear.