We were laughing as we approached
the polar bear exhibit at the Portland Zoo on a crisp fall day just last week.
It was a Monday, but we had taken the day off to come to the big city of
Portland, Oregon to celebrate her birthday. We were newly married and she had
not been to the Portland Zoo, so we joined the collective white (mostly),
hairless (mostly), ape-like (mostly) crowd, gaping at representative specimens
of our conquered earth.
It was a beautiful way to spend the
day. We were safely exploring specimens that had long ago given up considering
us as a meal. An encounter with the lion, tiger, mandrill or bear would have
looked much differently had we met them in their natural habitat. Instead we
stared at their calm and wise faces dumbly through protective glass or tall
fence, mouths agape in wonder. My eyes met those of a Bengal Tiger, who averted
his eyes dismissively. “Move it on down the line, mister,” he seemed to be
saying. In another exhibit, an otter played alone in spite of my pleas for some
kind of soulful exchange. Tapping on the glass was frowned upon, but I did so
anyway. I was not even acknowledged. Even the hippos, who had been sunning
themselves in the early morning warmth got up and, seemingly sensing a growing
crowd, turned their faces to a rock wall and went back to snoozing. One farted
noisily in our direction to uproarious laughter.
And then came my experience with the
polar bear.
“Wow,” I said to Heather, pointing
to a wall exhibit nearby, “he’s far larger than even a grizzly.”
Heather nodded. “Did you hear about
how the polar ice melting is causing real concerns for them? It’s so sad. I saw
a documentary on them the other day. They’re starving because they can’t move
around on the ice like they used to.”
Turning to the exhibit itself, I
noticed mechanically generated waves lapping against the great animal. He sat
staring vacantly ahead. He had a scar on his snout in the shape of a question
mark. His great body moved gently back and forth, but the water also seemed
tamed, apologetic for not being truer to its nature for the benefit of the
massive mammal in this sterile place.
A great sadness descended on me,
darkly.
“What have we done?” I whispered to
myself.
The great bear appeared to hear me,
somehow. He turned his head ninety degrees and looked at me alone. Our eyes
locked, and a conversation ensued. It took maybe a minute but it seemed to last
an hour, so much information passed between us.
“What have you done?” the polar bear
said to me.
I felt my eyes widen but knew enough
not to look away or it would break the conversation.
“That’s what I said, yes, but I
meant…”
“I know what you meant,” he said
impatiently. He regarded me coldly. “You humans see me here and you say to
yourselves, ‘look, a polar bear.’ But I am no bear. I am an exhibit. A bear is
an extension of his habitat by his very nature. He has no choice; it’s what he
is. He is Life exhibiting itself in the Manner of The Bear. You humans take the
bear out of the environment and think what you are seeing is the same thing you
would see in the wild. But you are wrong. What you see is Life manifesting
itself in the Manner of the Captive. I look like a bear, but I am only a
captive, a refugee. I have been eviscerated of my natural life force which I
gain from the ice, the blood of the seal and the fish people, the great and
wild tides of the ocean. These things have been removed from me, so I am but a
shell. The same can be said of the waters that lap against me like a cowed and
submissive serf. I have no respect for them. The same can be said of these
rocks. The same can be said of the food I eat. They are all tame, and I have no
respect for them.”
My mind was aflame. I knew he was
right, but I felt I had to defend myself, to tell him we are trying to help.
“We know about global climate change,” I volunteered. “We know that at least a
portion of it is human caused and we are trying to do things that slow it, like
driving cars with better fuel efficiency and turning off lights in the house
and… recycling...” I trailed off. The words sounded hollow to me, too.
“You’re turning off lights you don’t
need in the first place, and driving cars to places you don’t need to go that
get thirty miles per gallon rather than twenty three?” The great animal
snorted.
“Whole fisheries are being
decimated. Salmon are becoming harder to find every year, and they do not
return to rivers where you humans used to marvel at them, let alone survive by
them. You see pictures of grass growing in frozen lands where no grass in human
memory has ever grown. You see great rivers fed the year round by melting
glaciers in places where rivers never ran. And you’re driving less? Some of you
are recycling? That’s your solution?”
He paused. Then we said the same
thing simultaneously. “It’s not enough,” except I added, “…is it?” and he
added, “…by a long shot.”
My heart sank. The conversation was
over except for one last piece of advice.
“We animals in this zoo all speak
the same language. We speak it when there are fewer humans around to interfere
with the energetic transmission of the ideas. Go see the black bear. He has
lost his mind. He no longer knows to which species he belongs. Being so close
to his natural habitat, seeing it just beyond the great fence, has done that to
him. Go see him, and be aware of the other sights that present themselves to
you today, for in those sights you will see the fate of the humans, all because
you will not listen to Life.” He turned away. “We are done speaking now.”
The grey animal blurred, as did the
rocks and the impotent waters. I turned and said to Heather, careful to hide my
tears, “Let’s go, huh?” She quietly nodded and I wondered if she had heard
anything, as I had. But I wasn’t sure how to ask that, so I just took her hand
and we walked towards the black bear…exhibit.
We saw two more things that day that
stick in my memory and that haunt my dreams.
On a paved walkway through what was
once a deep, old growth forest we looked down upon a mid-sized black bear. He
paced twenty yards, turned and walked back, walked twenty yards, turned in precisely
the same spot, and paced back. This he repeated for the five minutes I could
stand to watch him. He never looked up and showed no signs of curiosity or
intelligence. He just appeared to be searching for something he would never
find and that he could never make appear. My heart was sick, as if I had caused
this, which of course I had - by my compliance with a system that profits from
the exploitation of all Life.
Finally making our way to the condor
exhibit, we saw a massive, prehistoric-looking bird on the ground. He was
violently eating, tearing the flesh away from some very dead animal.
It was the grey, bloodless body of a
man.
--aspen
April 2016