The first in a collection of essays on our connection pilgrimage across eleven states covering over five-thousand miles.
Let’s begin.
“Can you see them…the fresh tracks?” she said, pointing down from Little Moose.
Not being a seasoned wilderness person, it took a moment for my eyes to fix on the prints. But once I did, it felt like the saying, “The horse is out of the barn.” I couldn’t unsee them.
Bear tracks, grizzlies at that.
There, in the dirt on the trail where we rode, were the unmistakable and formidable paw prints that eclipsed any horse hooves or human shoe prints gone before: a long, fresh succession of large grizzly bear paw marks.
From the vantage point of sitting on a walking horse, bear spray on my belt loop, and a jack-knife in my pocket, I felt slightly less intimidated by the wilderness. But not much. Yes. This is real, I thought. Lions, and tigers, and bears, Oh My. There was no cell phone service. Only the SOS indicator: you can only place emergency calls. Billy Wilder, the great film director and screenwriter, was quoted as saying, “An actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through a window, you’ve got a situation.”
So, we’ve got a situation.
I don’t live where grizzlies, gray wolves, mountain lions, big horn sheep, mule deer, elk, and moose roam so riding into the backcountry in the shadow of the Absaroka’s[1] with two other women appealed to my audacious self. Nature’s abundance is curtailed in modern society, but I did Outward Bound Hurricane Island when I was sixteen. I have sailed offshore in the Atlantic to deliver a boat from Maine to Antigua during hurricane season. I have hiked five fourteeners in Colorado. I have skied, hiked and snowshoed in the Tetons. I swim in the ocean where there are sharks. I was an Army wife. I don’t spook easily. A ride into the wilderness with bears was not going to stop me from connecting with the earth or with the other two women who had invited me to join them.
Kathrin’s close friend, Sara, also joined us with her steed, Smokey. After a 90-minute journey in Kathrin’s truck and trailer loaded with the three horses, out from Dubois on Horse Creek Road, we drove up to Double Cabin campground. We tacked up the horses and rode into the Washakie wilderness on Bug Creek Trail with Boedeker Butte to our west and Mount Kent to our east.
"Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."
-Henry David Thoreau
Fully aware that it was grizzly bear season (it’s hard not to know with road signage that read, “Do Not Get Out of Your Car to Touch the Bears”, bear spray in the front of every grocery store, and Kathrin reminding me to bring my canister), I suspected there would be an element of unease for me. Not scared exactly, but perhaps, out of my comfort zone to a certain degree.
Thanks to television shows like Yellowstone, Lonesome Dove, Longmire, and Deadwood; and movies such as High Noon, Unforgiven, Silverado, and Dances with Wolves, we have an overly romantic and simplistic view of the American west mindset which suggest outlaws, Indians, explorers, cowboys, trappers, emigrant farmers, careworn women, and lots of scores to settle. Undergirded by implications of Europeans’ and Americans’ migration and taking the land many of the native people had lived on for over 12,000 years (aka “free federal government land”[2]), the geology, and the timber industry, the history is rich. Intuitively, I felt the day would nourish and honor my soul. How fortunate for me that Kathrin, the woman who owned the house we rented for a couple of weeks, had two horses, Little Bear and Little Moose. And, most importantly, she trusted me when I mentioned to her that I knew how to ride a horse (out of the fire).
The cerulean blue sky, the lodgepole pines and quaking aspens of the Shoshone National Forest[3] held my attention. The air smells like nothing and the breeze sounds big. Depression about yesterday or anxiety about tomorrow are burdens not permissible in the wilderness. The wild speaks to us with simple and compelling language. I am. Cherish my beauty. Hubris doesn’t work out here.
The thoughts have to be about Now.
Times such as these seem to illuminate the Divine’s test: in the crucible of the wilderness, we get to see how faithful we are. We must know that God is trustworthy and remain faithful in the present moment, no matter where we are. Uglily, current times have precipitated a world of clashing visions, intense tempers, and unpredictable events, and the opportunities for grasping the substance of life have faded as the pace of activity has increased. The substance of life is connection. To self, to others, to the planet, the universe. To God. They tell us, “We are more connected than ever,” via computers and the internet, as if this platitude is some pablum for loneliness. Simultaneously, and discouragingly, we have produced a strange isolation from the reality of our humanity and human history.
Instantly, the three of us fell into a natural cadence as if we had been friends for years instead of a few hours.
We didn’t speak much.
For the three of us women, it was a day for reflection, one of the most difficult of all our activities in 2024 due largely to our inability to establish relative priorities from the multitude of sensations that engulf us. Rides like these, into the wilderness, are largely about your mettle as much as your horsemanship. Being in the present moment wasn’t a photo of a woman meditating, eyes closed, hands at her heart, new age magazine cover article in the compulsive buying section at the grocery store checkout counter. Note: I am not knocking the meditating woman, I do it too.
This is a different kind of being present that has a much different perspective. Here in this rugged region being present requires an alertness to the scent of carcasses, subtle sounds of twigs cracking, the proximity of bear skat, the direction of prints, the unexpected hesitation of your horse to move ahead.
The most important aspect of our ride, however, was not its tangibles but upon the intangibles as relates to connection and those who wish to learn something of the beliefs of spiritual healing, like me. Across much literature from the Bible to Longfellow to Milton to London’s “Call of the Wild” to Neihardt’s “Black Elk Speaks” and volumes more, our contemporary generation of humans who have been aggressively searching for roots of their own in the structure of universal reality can see a distinct theme: connection with the earth, whether in the wilderness or your backyard or the local park or the beach, is the foundation upon which we connect with ourselves and then with others. If we cannot connect with God and what God has provided for us in nature, how can we connect with ourselves?
I looked up the word “hate” in my American Heritage Dictionary of The English language.
Hate: v. hated, hating, hates. 1a. to feel hostility or animosity toward. b. To detest. 2. To feel dislike or distaste for. To feel hatred.
To me, hate is the opposite of connection, so I refuse to be a part of it.
There are a lot of messages of hate in the world and we may easily be distracted by these messages. We may focus on things that are not important, but that does not mean we cannot flip the lens. Life is about connection: spiritual, emotional, mental, physical connection which is the brook that leads to the stream that leads to river that leads to the ocean of love. I am not the first to write this, nor will I be the last, but it is important to reiterate: we are all connected. Our souls are connected to nature, and we may spend our lives with our eyes open and never see a doggone thing. Most people stumble through this foolish business called life, eyes open, eager to grasp the material things, but when the Divine smacks you with abundance, I invite you to get accustomed to seeing things instead of just registering them and forgetting them, like you’re scrolling through your social media. Keep bears wild.
Connection: it’s a thing.
Explore more about the art of connection at the 5th quarter with tori and transform your relationships for the better.
[3] The United States’ oldest national forest, the Shoshone National Forest is a veritable treasure trove of outdoor adventure in the heart of the state of Wyoming.
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