The season, one that my own call the Little Winter, that time near autumn’s end when the season’s have traded places while the calendar fails to keep pace, has been unusually mild so far. Oh, it’s cold now, with intermittent snows, but in an average year, our first snows arrive in October, and the cold follows along behind.
This year, the mercury continued to rise into the sixties well into November. Climate change is upon us. in measureable terms.
For us, that means that the wild creatures who inhabit this land are being kept from their usual patterns. Typically, the first evidence of bear appears in the first week or so of October, and by early November, they have entered that state of slumber that is uniquely theirs, one just shy of hibernation.
This year, they’ve been around far more recently.
The circadian rhythms that accompany their winter rest will, we hope, prove to be a good tool of adaptation for them in these climatically troubled times: Because their sleep is not one of true hibernation, they remain responsive to certain stimuli, and can awaken if the weather is sufficiently warm. Of course, that will mean that they will need to hunt for food in midwinter, and the human population will have to adapt accordingly to the possibility of their occasional presence.
For the most part, they stay up in the mountains, avoiding the so-called developed areas where human habitation continues to encroach upon their own natural habitat. For them, it’s a place of abundance: safe hideaways among the slops and cliffs; plenty of wild game; and a number of natural watersheds in the form of lakes, rivers, and streams. What little snow the peaks have gotten thus far this season has been melting rapidly, so the runoff will be available to them longer than usual; by now, the snowpack would normally already be freezing solid but for the new surface snows.
Their belated presence puts me in mind of one particular sculpture in our inventory — one of the smallest, actually, a simple little nominally-humpbacked bear by Ned Archuleta. From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
Taos Pueblo master carver Ned Archuleta has coaxed a little “furry” medicine bear from this chunk of stone: The hair of his coat is carved right into his body. This little guy is This piece really shows the variability of pink alabaster: All of one small block of stone, his face is nearly white, but from the ears back his body shows varying shades of rose, almost purple, in the stone’s matrix. Inlaid bits of turquoise serve as his eyes, and his medicine bundle, tied on with the traditional sinew, is of turquoise and coral beads. At a little under 4″ long, this piece is almost — but not quite — small enough to be considered a fetish; he fits comfortably in your hand, or on a desktop or mantel. Another angle shown at top.
Pink alabaster; Sleeping Beauty turquoise; coral; sinew
$125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
He is fashioned in the style of our indigenous black bears, or a brown bear, or even a grizzly bear, and yet there is something about this little creature that has always also made me think of the bears of winter from lands far to the north: the polar bear.
Perhaps part of it is his color, pale pink shot through with patches of mulberry here and there. No, I’ve never seen a purple polar bear. But the light pink shade somehow evokes the feel of a white bear whose fur has been tinted by sunlight and shadow.
But it’s also something in the expression, a look that bespeaks both curiosity and focus, that reminds me of the great white bears of the north. Of course, white bears are not unknown here, either: the spirit bear, which is white but not albino, a genetic variant of the black bear. The outside world will tell you they reside only in one small area of the Pacific Northwest, but our peoples know better; their small numbers have been a part of our cultures for millennia, including that of Wings’s own people (and mine, far north and east of here).
The spirit bears of the Pacific Northwest are creatures of the waters, able to withstand cold temperatures to feed on the fish through much of the winter. In other places where they are known only to the old cultures, they are often spirits of the woods, and here, the mountain forests, but like their brothers in the northwest and their polar cousins, they, too, are drawn to the waters.
For us, bears represent strength and protection and medicine. These spirits of the early winter waters are good medicine to have around.
~ Aji
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