“The bear is a dark continent
that walks upright
like a man.”
—-Linda Hogan, “Bear”
“And one
hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me,
the next groaned out,
the next,
the next,
the rest of my days I spend
wandering: wondering
what, anyway,
was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?”
—-Galway Kinnell, “The Bear”
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Hello Lovelies—
Buckets of gratitude for reading A Woman’s Place Is In the Wild. I appreciate all of you who support these weekly meditations. I have been inspired by Stephanie Land who writes compellingly about getting paid for the words we put out into the world and for the work we do, particularly as women. So I’m asking you, if you can afford it. to please subscribe (for as little as $6/mo). Your financial support of the writing I am doing here helps me keep the lights on. I appreciate it.
I saw my first bear of the season this week.
Actually I saw three, the same three I saw last fall.
A mama and her twin yearlings, whose bodies were surprisingly tawny.
While the first hummingbird of the season feels like the return of joy after the long winter, the first bear unlocks something deeper: a recognition.
Or perhaps a reckoning.
One of the first bears I saw was a grizzly in Yellowstone. I was in my late twenties. I had come down a mountain pass on the east side of the park, after a thunderstorm. I knew a buffalo herd grazed the grasslands below and I wanted to see them. The sky to the south was black with weather, and I was pressing into it, but overhead the clouds pulled apart like cotton balls and pockets of light splashed down on the valley. I’d swung my head to the side, tracking a big bird, when I saw them—a pair of two-year-olds, turning rocks not far from the road, their shoulders and front paws dipped in honey.
I cried that such beauty lived in the world.
I watched the bears for a long time as wind swirled among the tall grass and the sun sank. There is something elemental about coming into the presence of a big predator. I felt more than awe. Instead, I had the feeling of being picked up and deposited back in my place among the stars; I was no more and no less than the rest of it.
But make no mistake, I was part of it.
I saw the three bears on a day earlier this week when I’d stalked the woods in a dark mood, my eyes stubbornly fixed on the ground at my feet, my mind enjoying its misery. I was refusing to look up, to see the slender lodgepoles still stubbornly standing after ferocious spring wind storms had reconfigured the forest. I was so in my head, so entranced by a litany of failures, I’d even ignored the miracle of a single Pasque flower blooming inside a tangle of newly fallen trees, a rarity in the lodgepole pine forest.
At home, Greg saw the bears first and called to me. We watched the two cinnamon colored cubs with comically dark ears, follow their mother up a neighbor’s drive and disappear.
I felt a vault slide open inside my chest.
Bear season had arrived.
I’ve had an affinity for bears for as long as I can remember. I follow their rhythms and think of them often, in winter, wondering what they dream in the deep sleep of the season, as I burrow in to write and nap and watch the fire. And then, in their emergence in spring—a kind of miracle of survival—as I am also reminded to embrace the world of the living, to roam the mountain, to meet friends for dinner and sit with Greg in the evenings on the deck watching birds land on the rail to pick seed.
One of my most precious possessions is a flat, blade-shaped bear fetish made of smoky pumice. It has become a kind of talisman as it, alone, survived the cabin fire that destroyed all my possessions and much of my writing twenty years ago. I sobbed when I unearthed it from nearly two feet of ash in the wreckage of my life and I carried it with me, wrapped in red felt, until I found a new home, four months later.
And I carry bear with me still.
When I teach writing to young or new writers, I often give them Galway Kinnell’s poem, “The Bear,” about a man who hunts a bear by placing a sharp bone inside meat and then tracking the bear by its blood across the ice and arriving at the carcass to “tear him down his whole length/and open him and climb in.” There he becomes the bear and “dream[s]/of lumbering flatfooted/over the tundra,/stabbed twice from within,/splattering a trail behind me.”
“Your writing is like the bear, “ I tell my students.
“. . . And one
hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me,
the next groaned out,
the next,
the next,
the rest of my days I spend
wandering: wondering
what, anyway,
was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?”
“You must stalk it. You must climb inside.”
This week, the bears were a reminder of this admonition as I embark on a summer of stalking the story of my Grand Aunt Nina for a novel in progress and rewriting a collection of short stories about outliers in the West. Both are taking more time than I’d like, but, I remind myself. I must keep stalking the stories circling inside me. I must let them cover me and hold me until the day I can sing them into the world.
I am off to Mountain Words in Crested Butte, Colorado this weekend, followed by the very affordable Story Catcher Workshop where I will be reading manuscripts. Then it's Lighthouse Litfest in early June. My Zoom workshops have plenty of space (see individual workshops below).
And finally, for those of you who live in the area, I am teaching two Writing Wild Workshops this summer. Get $25 off if you register before May 31st.
I hope to see you this summer.
Thank you for reading.
Big love,
Karen
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I’d love to see you at one of these upcoming events.
Upcoming Events
Mountain Words Literary Festival
May 24-26th, Crested Butte, CO
June 4-7, Gunnison, CO
SPACES LEFT - ONLY $300, LODGING INCLUDED
Lighthouse Lit Fest
The Burning Heart: Finding Energy in your Short Fiction
Saturday June 8th, 1:30-3:30MT VIA ZOOM
$85
Homing In: Uncovering the Arc of your Memoir
Sunday, June 9th, 9:00-11:00MT VIA ZOOM
$85
Truth or Dare: Writing Family Stories
Wednesday, June 12th, 4:00-6:00MT VIA ZOOM
$85
Writing Wild with Karen Auvinen
Space limited
Sunday, June 24th 10-3pm
Rollinsville, CO
Register by May 31st - $125
After May 31st -$150
Writing Wild with Karen Auvinen
Space Limited
Sunday, August 4th 10-3pm
Rollinsville, CO
Register by May 31st - $125
After May 31st -$150
Living Wild Writing & Creativity Prompts
The next Living Wild Writing & Creativity prompt comes out Saturday. Paid subscribers have access to the full archive of Living Wild Writing & Creativity Prompts (look for the fox pictures on my home page) which come out biweekly.
A Woman’s Place is in the Wild is a reader-supported weekly meditation on all things wild. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you would like to support my work and these weekly posts, the best way is by becoming a paid subscriber, which gives you access to the full archive of weekly Living Wild Meditations plus all of the Living Wild creativity and writing prompts. If you want to read more, check out Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living.